Bay 12 Games Forum

I have a copy of Frozen Synapse (not the DLC, though) that I'd be happy to give away. Do I just send it to Nighthawk, or is there some other process?

Doesn't mean it wouldn't take me an effload of time to memorize and recognize the common patterns in a brainfuck application

No, no. The first thing you do is write an interpreter for something more sane in brainfuck, then never think about the underlying code ever again. These are turing machines we are dealing with, after all.

To stay mostly on topic, I'll second Nadaka in that you need to learn to program, and that that's different from being able to produce code in some language. Getting a BS is certainly an option, but if you're already past that phase and don't want to spend the time there, you can probably get by with reading and writing a lot of code. Choose an open-source project or something that seems interesting, and read (and understand!) what it's trying to do and why. Find a feature that is wanted and try to implement it, then submit it as a patch (and have it accepted). Repeat until it feels natural rather than frustrating and awkward. There are also some good programming theory books available on the web if you wanted to approach it from a more academic stance[1] (but again, didn't want to go {back}? to school for it).

[1] I like Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, but that's because I think that Lisp is a beautiful language. You may disagree.

Quote from: Rysith on May 13, 2011, 09:34:43 am

It's not about knowing the tools. Also, almost nobody uses C or FORTRAN anymore, or even the programming paradigms that they represent. And if you want to choose a subset of math for programming to be a subset of, you'd be better off choosing set theory[1].

Lol, so what do you think nuclear engineers are using? Visual Basic?

If you were serious, I suppose I shall laugh harder.

No, I think that nuclear engineers aren't computer scientists and don't represent the vast majority of things that you would do with a computer science degree. Both C and FORTRAN are still used, but they aren't the skills that you'd need to be qualified as a computer scientist, or the programming paradigms that you'd need outside of the more hardcore engineering disciplines.

Even some of the serious supercomputing stuff is moving away from C/MPI and similar to things that are easier to deal with[1], like Java (or, as was mentioned MATLAB and Python) because it's comparable performance-wise and much easier to develop in the first place (or, in some cases, handles the presence of shared-memory architectures much more safely)

Though, by all means, if you want to go into Engineering you don't need the stuff that a CS degree would teach you about programming.

[...snip...]

This probably shows that I don't have enough of a pure math background. Back to graduate school with me!

When I think of the theoretical CS stuff that I learned, it didn't even bother itself with the algorithms so much as the set of inputs, the set of outputs, and the set of machines that could transform the input to the output - the existence of an algorithm rather than an actual implementation, which seemed more like set theory to me, though I'll admit that I'm not familiar enough with where different disciplines fall within math to actually make that judgement.

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I enjoy programming, but I hate the scene, I usually sit alone in my computer classes because I'm more of a umm a party kid.

I do not see why that would be that big an issue. While there may be LESS party people in CS than some other fields, they are there AND you can party with other people too. Especially if you join a Frat or something.

This. Choosing a major based on what the scene is like doesn't seem like a very good idea, especially since there isn't any reason why you have to restrict the people you hang out with to people in your major - I was CS, but hung out with the physicists (and materials/biomedical engineers) more than other CS people.

[1] Where they aren't moving to CUDA/whateverATI'sthing is, which is an entirely different pain in the neck.

Although it's intended for calculating the yields from antimatter space weaponry, I suspect that this site would be useful in terms of calculating what kind of effect you'd have, and why. Given the weight of antimatter that you're looking at, it looks like it's going to fall into the 'big crater' category.

In eighth grade, for our model constitutional convention, I managed to put in law, single-handedly, that only white men with property were allowed to vote, own slaves, be represented, and so on.  Not that they were allowed the vote, but that only these people were.  I managed to get other women going on misogynistic diatribes about the inefficacy and stupidity of women, and how it would be completely unreasonable to ever allow a woman control over anything.  I think I also greatly increased state rights, and our model was generally more Southern.  This occurred in a classroom in one of the most flamingly liberal areas in the US.

On the other hand, my ex-boyfriend managed to get the entire classroom to agree to slavery on a level I never managed (moral and economic), so props to him, I guess >_>

Let's see... I was also forced to argue for fluoridation in water being poison, against the other "designated smart kid," and campaign for Taft against Teddy Roosevelt, and debate for British Imperialism against colonial America.  Surprisingly, these all worked fairly well, other than the fact that my school had a ridiculous debate team, model UN, and math olympiad group, and it seemed like the same people were on all of these--while I attended none.

This would seem to be evidence that not enough critical thinking is being taught in schools. Not that that diminishes the accomplishments of convincing people to do things that, if they had any real-world consequences, would be horribly against their interests. Maybe it's just the women that I hang out with, but I think that getting other women going on misogynistic rants is even more impressive than getting people to agree with slavery. Slavery, after all, isn't remembered by many eighth graders.

On the happy thread topic, I got to discuss which interview questions would make candidates heads explode today, and demonstrated that ourinterviewing group has a very strange sense of humor.

Holy shit, new Audiosurf gamemodes are awesome.
Too bad they're embedded into the song and not toggleable options.

I think that they are toggleable with the tags on the song, since they change the track behavior of the song and Audiosurf tracks scores by song. You should be able to add the new game modes to any song that you want.

Also, homemade falafel makes me happy.

The best way to do sleeper sites is really to get an organized gang going and using remote reppers, shield or armour doesn't really matter, as long as everyone is using the same thing, obviously.

I think people here are running wormholes from high-sec, and thus likely C1/2 rather than the kind where you need remote reppers[1]. It's worth noting, though, that you can run up to C4s or so in what is essentially a 0.0 roaming gang, which makes things much better for you if anyone decides to drop in on you.

[1] Plus, before you get either a bunch of battleships or a person or two who can fly logistics well, it's not really worth it to try spider tanking.