Mauritius Blog Tracker

I have just come across a great article by Alex Iskold entitled Top 10 Traits of a Rockstar Software Engineer. It is a must read for all aspiring software engineers out there… especially those who are still learning the skills in a university.
The 10 traits he mentions are:

Loves To Code
Gets Things Done
Continuously Refactors Code
Uses Design Patterns
Writes Tests
Leverages [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “On being a Rock Star Software Engineer”, url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/04/15/on-being-a-rock-star-software-engineer/” });

My Year II students are currently learning scripting with Ruby, my favorite programming language (ex aequo with Scheme I think…). Today I thought about what could be the difference between scripting and programming and I came up with:
Scripting is the same as programming except that you don’t have to worry about unnecessary details like deciding [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Scripting with Ruby and Audioscrobbler”, url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/04/14/scripting-with-ruby-and-audioscrobble/” });

I am currently teaching programming languages to second year students. I spent about 4 weeks introducing Scheme to them and I covered the following topics:

Expressions
Functions
Scope
Recursion and tail-recursion optimization
Pairs and lists
Higher-order function

Each lecture was followed by a lab session where students practiced what they saw in class.
I then gave the students an assignment to do where [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Scheme is a good language for beginners”, url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/04/11/scheme-is-a-good-language-for-beginners/” });

Last friday, second year students following my Programming Languages class had a test on Scheme and Prolog. I asked them eight relatively straightforward questions which they had to complete in 45 minutes. I hope that most of them managed to get most of the answers right (I could see some students struggling though…) As I [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Answers for my Scheme and Prolog test”, url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/04/07/answers-for-my-scheme-and-prolog-test/” });

Despite my interest in all things Ruby especially Ruby on Rails, I’ve decided to have a look at some powerful enterprise Java technologies. As you know, last semester, I taught Software Architecture at Masters level and I’ve become fond of using Java once more (which I used for the lab sessions).
Of course, the fact that [...]

SHARETHIS.addEntry(
{
title: “Hibernate: a powerful enterprise Java technology”,
url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/03/26/hibernate-a-powerful-enterprise-java-technology/”
}

);

As you all know by now, I am currently teaching the Scheme programming language to my 2nd year students as a means to master the functional programming paradigm.

I started four weeks ago with a general introduction on programming paradigms and on the necessity to at least know the most important ones in order to become [...]

SHARETHIS.addEntry(
{
title: “Learning Scheme with me”,
url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/02/25/learning-scheme-with-me/”
}

);

Normally, it starts at $TimeWakeUp, depending on the $Mood and $Health of the blogger, for me being at about 6am if my mood and health is ok.

Like everybody else, bloggers do have their lunch, but, before starting to do anything, the first thing is to actually switch on their computer to check if there are [...]

In his beautiful essay, The Art of Lisp & Writing, Richard Gabriel makes a strong case for the use of programming mediums instead of programming languages when either introducing programming to students or starting a new project.
He says:
“The difference between Lisp and Java, as Paul Graham has pointed out, is that Lisp is for working [...]

SHARETHIS.addEntry(
{
title: “Learning by experimenting (with Scheme)”,
url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/01/31/learning-by-experimenting-with-scheme/”
}

);

I’ve just started teaching a new module today to second year Computer Science students. It’s the Programming Languages module where students are supposed to be exposed to alternative paradigms and programming languages.
Today I had a lab session with one of the group of students and, as lecture hasn’t started yet, I asked them to write [...]

SHARETHIS.addEntry(
{
title: “Creativity in Programming”,
url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/01/21/creativity-in-programming/”
}

);

I came across a great blog entry “Books that should exist” by Daniel Ehrenberg, a well-known Factor hacker, today where he writes:
I, like many of you reading this blog, have an unhealthy interest in programming languages. Mine may be a little more unhealthy than yours. Whenever I hear the name of a programming language that [...]

SHARETHIS.addEntry(
{
title: “The Story of Programming: great idea!”,
url: “http://www.noulakaz.net/weblog/2008/01/15/the-story-of-programming-great-idea/”
}

);