Comments on: 212: TZ Discussion – Where the Hell is My Heisenmachine?

By: iSoftwareMaker

iSoftwareMaker — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 11:20:23 +0000

@Doug Martin +1

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:18:26 +0000

@Doug Martin – Now that you mention it, I think they might. 😉 I’ll check with Justin to see what his temperature is about doing a show this weekend. I’d like to because my list of things to discuss is growing without bound!

By: Doug Martin

Doug Martin — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 15:09:17 +0000

When’s the next podcast gentleman? They do have Internet in England don’t they? 🙂

By: Jason

Jason — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 18:37:50 +0000

@Justin – Hey, slow down there on all the comments, we wouldn’t want you to pull a muscle or anything. 😉

By: Justin

Justin — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 08:15:15 +0000

Just a quick note to all today thanks for continued support and and comments here, and also to say hi from York in the UK!

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 06:43:22 +0000

@Jason – There might be some simplifies cloud9s out there, but can’t argue with the madness. I know it too well.

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 05:51:13 +0000

@Ignacio – That is really effin’ cool! Thanks so much for the link. 😉

By: Ignacio

Ignacio — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 03:40:24 +0000

Came across something that you guys could use as inspiration for catalyst coder maybe.
It’s a javascript visual parser: http://jsparse.meteor.com/

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:06:34 +0000

@Udi Mosayev – No problem! 😉

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:06:09 +0000

@Aleksander – I don’t think you have to go into a bank to do a wire transfer. Did one of us say that on the show?

By: Jason

Jason — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:01:45 +0000

@Paul – Cloud9 is indeed very slick, but it’s a bit too much for 8-11 year olds. The UI needs to be greatly simplified to keep kids in this age range from becoming distracted, frustrated or intimidated (or all three at the same time). One thing I’ve learned is that if there’s a button, they WILL click it. 😉 But also I’m integrating programming games into the IDE, so it’s definitely a custom programming job.

One last thing – did I mention that I have the madness?!!!! There’s no talking me out of it now. 😉

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:47:13 +0000

@Andrea – Yeah, I don’t think I’d want to force the kids to use IE, which would just be plain mean. 😉

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:45:39 +0000

@Chris Lorenz – You’re right, a while loop would be easier to explain than a for loop. Guyon mentioned that to me at least a few times (and probably Justin, too), but somehow it didn’t stick and I only had for loop on the brian. Oh, well, lesson learned. 😉

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:38:50 +0000

@James Robert – Good point. It’s going to be interesting to see if the audio job board experiment works.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 23:37:15 +0000

@Stanislaw Pitucha & @Pascal – You guys are right, sweet.js looks very cool and will probably give us most of what we need. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. 😉

By: Peter Zsoldos

Peter Zsoldos — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 06:53:02 +0000

+1 for Chris Lorenz’s comment – I’ve also learnt while loops first, and then had the for loop explained to me as syntactic sugar/shortcut.

Understanding the distinction between while & do-while was confusing though

By: Aleksander

Aleksander — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 02:08:10 +0000

Do people in the US really go to a bank to make a money transfer? That’s so weird! That’s like going to the post office to send an e-mail. 😉

For me it’s logging onto a website, providing 4 data pcs (recipient name, account num, bank name, money amount) that I’d usually copy-paste from an e-mail or an invoice pdf and it’s done! Shouldn’t really take more than 60-90 seconds. 😉

Maybe there are some European banks in the US that provide a better service?

By: Udi Mosayev

Udi Mosayev — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:49:19 +0000

@Jason & @Justin – Thank you 🙂

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 18:28:32 +0000

Are you aware that there are several web-based IDEs that you can use with the Catalyst kids
(instead of writing a new one…)?

The one that supports the most languages is cloud9 (at c9.io), and it has a free plan.
Python is included, of course.

By: Andrea

Andrea — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 17:39:57 +0000

You could do VBScript in the browser if they use IE however since Microsoft has run away from VB it’s probably not worth it.

By: Chris Lorenz

Chris Lorenz — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 17:12:25 +0000

Why don’t you teach them for loops using while loops. Much more logicial. Then as a shortcut you show for loops. Write your name 5 times. Ask them to do it using a while loop. They will have to come up with something like
int i =1;
while(i<=5){
print(name)
i = i+1;
}
Very logicial. The only reason for the for loop in the first place. You complain about the semicolon but it is just taking these lines and putting them in more of a readable format.

By: James Robert

James Robert — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:38:46 +0000

Re: The Audio Job Board

Keep in mind that it generally costs a company in the realm of 3 – 6 months Salary to have a recruiter find candidates. So for a few hundred dollars, if Uber media got one good candidate, it’d be a bargain.

By: Pascal

Pascal — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 11:41:35 +0000

sweetjs was the first thing that came to my mind, as well. Before you write a whole new compiler, you should really take a look.

By: Stanislaw Pitucha

Stanislaw Pitucha — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 00:02:21 +0000

If you just want to add nicer functionality to JS, maybe macros are enough – sweet.js has been released lately and could help you there (http://sweetjs.org/). In Python same thing could be done with a custom loader using the ‘compile’ and ‘ast’ modules. Any of them should allow a “repeat(…)” to be created.

Justin, are you planning to visit any tech meetups in Europe, or is it a completely private trip? It would be cool to say “hi” if you’re going to be somewhere close by.