Journey to the Mess

Do Software Engineers Need to Learn Mathematics?

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 16:52:00 -0400

Do Software Engineers Need to Learn Mathematics?:

…software engineering is all about abstraction. Every single concept, construct, and method is entirely abstract. Of course, it doesn’t feel that way to most software engineers. But that’s my point. The main benefit they got from the mathematics they learned in school and at university was the experience of rigorous reasoning with purely abstract objects and structures.

Many of my peers have never found a direct need to use higher mathematics outside of the academic realm, but little did they know that they might already have benefited greatly from the days of rigorous mathematical grind.

Where else would one find an easy way to sharpen the reasoning and abstract thoughts faculty of the brain in our world where almost everyone is compelled to go through an education route, thanks to the industrial revolution?

What Work Is Really For

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 13:36:00 -0400

What Work Is Really For:

True freedom requires that we take part in the market as fully formed agents, with life goals determined not by advertising campaigns but by our own experience of and reflection on the various possibilities of human fulfillment. Such freedom in turn requires a liberating education, one centered not on indoctrination, social conditioning or technical training but on developing persons capable of informed and intelligent commitments to the values that guide their lives.

This is why, especially in our capitalist society, education must not be primarily for training workers or consumers (both tools of capitalism, as Marxists might say). Rather, schools should aim to produce self-determining agents who can see through the blandishments of the market and insist that the market provide what they themselves have decided they need to lead fulfilling lives. Capitalism, with its devotion to profit, is not in itself evil. But it becomes evil when it controls our choices for the sake of profit.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/work-good-or-bad/

A great piece by Gary Gutting, professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.

This is an example of some very basic questions we sometimes just don’t ask and yet we take it for granted that the reality simply just exists as it is.

I strongly believe there are always underlying causes and effects, especially when it comes to human society.

Professor Gutting, has nailed down a link between current paradigm of “work” and “education”, further lending evidence to the perception that current educational institutions are made to produce workers, no more thinkers, in contrast to the reality before the industrial revolution, when education stands for more than just work.

The current waking nightmare of paper-chases towards diplomas and degrees are blights in the lives of current urbanites, that is us. Unfortunately, it seems that our fate and our future generations are latched firmly by this “parasite” that eats away our being from the core, reducing us to “slaves” and “serfs” of this modern era. Leaving empty shells of unfulfillment, we slowly step into our graves, wondering what kind of life had we actually experienced, or missed entirely.

Do you work to live, or live to work? Is the question relevant?

CSS Pre-processors: SASS vs LESS

Thu, 17 May 2012 11:18:11 -0400

CSS Pre-processors: SASS vs LESS:

If you’ve reached the CSS coding level where you hate CSS and its shortcomings, here are 2 of the hot CSS pre-processors, laid out in comparison by Chris Coyer nicely.

Which would you choose?

Stop Telling Students to Study for Exams

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:01:48 -0400

Stop Telling Students to Study for Exams:

“If there is one student attitude that most all faculty bemoan, it is instrumentalism. This is the view that you go to college to get a degree to get a job to make money to be happy. Similarly, you take this course to meet this requirement, and you do coursework and read the material to pass the course to graduate to get the degree. Everything is a means to an end. Nothing is an end in itself. There is no higher purpose.”—David Jaffee

After more than 20 years of education, or what’s left of it, I finally come across the word that describes the sentiments of many fellow students which infuriates me—”Instrumentalism”.

The way it is now, knowledge has been pushed back to second place, right behind “appearing-knowledgeable-by-a-piece-of-paper-just-so-that-hopefully- it-will-raise-my-employment-chances-with-future-employers”.

While it is true that, all else accounted for, livelihood is of utmost importance. This is a smear on education’s role in mankind’s progress.

Finding causation isn’t hard, because there’s simple so many right in front of your eyes: globalisation, urbanisation, labour demand, industry shifts, economy restructuring, rat race, etc.

Finding people to accept it as a problem, determining roots of the problems, and be resolved into solving it, is extremely difficult.

Not much is left of the days where education is seen as sacred, bringing enlightenment to the people, contributing to society’s progress.

Are we seeing progress now?

Maybe we are, just that we’re going in the opposite direction.

Thinking: Why I'm taking full responsibility for my education

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:56:00 -0400

Thinking: Why I'm taking full responsibility for my education:

jarredsumner:

Summary: High school isn’t educational because it incentivizes a credential only meaningful to universities instead of educating students. Then, it lets students blame their ignorance on their school when they enter The Real World.

I love learning, but I’ve never excelled in school. That might…

A great read. Education lost its meaning when it’s primarily used to sort population through games like examinations and tests. The battle is not just of intelligence and wits on knowledge acquisition, but also of gaming the system by conserving your resources.

“Why do more when you only need to get that certain grade with sufficient amount of work? I’m not interested anyway.”—This might be a common attitude that results.

For those who really wants to learn, there are few opportunities in the form of school project work which sometimes has larger scope than what is taught in the classroom.

On a side note:

The minds of schoolchildren are sometimes drilled so much into school, and all the work load that it offers, that they don’t realize what they actually are getting. “Too young to know,” “it is for their own good,” is always used as an reason for further stuffing more facts down the young students’ throats or brains.

I’d say, “Good trick, then they’ll never have spare time nor spare brain capacity to realize for themselves.”

What do you do for your own education?

WebKit.js: Yes it has finally happened! Browser Inception is now possible.

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 18:52:00 -0400

WebKit.js: Yes it has finally happened! Browser Inception is now possible.:

Every web developer’s dream come true!

Edit: Happy April’s Fool :D

We all know about deadlines. But people don’t know that...

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:52:00 -0400

We all know about deadlines. But people don’t know that trinity of “Quality, Cheap, Fast”, you can only choose 2. The video is a perfect example why you shouldn’t rush things, especially about creatives.

Computers In Schools Are A Failure, Says Computer Pioneer Alan Kay [Apple in Education]

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:09:00 -0400

Computers In Schools Are A Failure, Says Computer Pioneer Alan Kay [Apple in Education]:

An old article featuring Alan Kay, the 2003 ACM A.M. Turing Award winner, speaks on computer aids and their impact in schools.

“When I look at computers in schools, this is what I see. It’s all Guitar Hero,”—Alan Kay

The medium of instruction has been changing over the span of our known civilization. From speech, carvings, and stone tablets, to writings, books, and computers.

Sure, there is technological progress, and there is definitely increasing adoption of the information technology of our age. However, we’re missing the point if we think that we can improve the imparting of knowledge from one generation to the next only by getting better tools.

The essence of teaching, is the instruction itself. The medium in which instruction is delivered is all icing on the cake, or *blink* *blink* that looks nice but less than useful enough.

It seems, most educational institutions are not teaching correctly, much less using computers to even try teaching.

One of many things about media design (where x ranges from from art, theater, writing, teaching, to interactive computer interfaces) that most people don’t understand, is that the main purpose of “great x” is to act as a kind of “magic mirror” which reflects the beholders’ own intelligence back out at them so they both “remember things they have forgotten”, and that one of these things is that they can learn how to think and learn.

WHAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU ARE IN A BAD MOOD?

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:31:05 -0400

Eat the bad mood.

"“Cosmic AC,” said Man, “How may entropy be reversed?” The Cosmic AC said,..."

Sun, 11 Mar 2012 19:22:00 -0400

“

“Cosmic AC,” said Man, “How may entropy be reversed?”
The Cosmic AC said, “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

Man said, “AC, is this the end? Can this chaos not be reversed into the Universe once more? Can that not be done?”
AC said, “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

”

- http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

An intriguing question that has harped the minds of generations of beings in the science fiction world of Isaac Asimov.

It’s not so much of the geekness or nerd aura of the question that is important. The real question is “Then what?”

It is always an interesting thought experiment to think about the progression of events and situations into infinity time and space. However, man’s lifespan, as of now, does not compare much to the immortality needed to observe when all things end.

For those people who have spent much time to think hard about it, either in jest for self-amusement, or in earnest for the better of the future generations, must have had some inkling that there might be an unavoidable dark future ahead.

Dark as in without light, physically, and also as in without a future, figuratively. Some might have trouble accepting that and either stopped thinking altogether or fall into some sort of depression or madness at the unsolvable. Some might come to peace with it knowing that we’re all stardust.

Tip: You have now, which we call the present.

What would you do if you were asked “Then what?”?

Building Responsive Layouts with Sass

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 16:56:19 -0500

Building Responsive Layouts with Sass:

How to manage all that complexity when your designs gets too big with many different layout templates and CSS grows into a monster.

Some things gotta give for pragmatism, that will be the “semantic web”.

Those of you who know me well will probably do a double take after reading this post. I am using a lot of presentational class names in our new system. Has Chris given up on semantic layouts? No. But I am a pragmatist – CSS file size has to be kept in check on a site of our size. However, this approach provides solutions to many of the issues I’ve had with traditional grid systems in the past. What’s more, it is just one step away from true semantic layout approach (extending layout classes instead of using them in your markup) – but that last step is the one that bloats the output the most.—Chris Eppstein

Amazing TED Talk by Andrew Stanton on storytelling. Priceless...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 20:20:00 -0500

Amazing TED Talk by Andrew Stanton on storytelling.

Priceless lessons from one who worked his way through and found them through successive experimenting.

Are you a good storyteller?

http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story.html

"Dear Amazon Web Services Customer, We are excited to announce a reduction in Amazon EC2, Amazon..."

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:29:00 -0500

“

Dear Amazon Web Services Customer,

We are excited to announce a reduction in Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Amazon ElastiCache prices. Reserved Instance prices will decrease by up to 37% for Amazon EC2 and by up to 42% for Amazon RDS across all regions. On-Demand prices for Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Amazon ElastiCache will drop by up to 10%. We are also introducing volume discount tiers for Amazon EC2, so customers who purchase a large number of Reserved Instances will benefit from additional discounts. Today’s price drop represents the 19th price drop for AWS, and we are delighted to continue to pass along savings to you as we innovate and drive down our costs.

All of your On-Demand usage will automatically be charged at the new lower rate as of March 1st. New Reserved Instance prices will only apply to Reserved Instances purchases made on or after March 6th. With the new pricing, Reserved Instances will provide savings of up to 71% compared to On-Demand instances, so you may want to take this opportunity to review your current usage and to determine if you would like to purchase additional Light, Medium, or Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances.

Please visit the Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, and Amazon ElastiCache pricing pages for the complete list of new lower prices and an overview of the new volume discount program.

Sincerely,
The Amazon Web Services Team

”

- Amazon AWS ♥

More HTML5 Rocks! More reasons that browser vendors should adopt...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:04:00 -0500

More HTML5 Rocks!

More reasons that browser vendors should adopt it, though the modern browsers already did. Those that didn’t, yes YOU M$ IE 6-9, should be banished into oblivion. But that’s not happening, when they hold the source. The default browser in PC, which not many non-tech savvy people knows to overcome (Come on there’s Google Chrome!), has its perks. That perk is being an ass and holding internet hostage by its balls.

http://slides.html5rocks.com/#landing-slide

In the bowels of time when the internet was still new. There...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 21:55:00 -0500

In the bowels of time when the internet was still new. There were little choices on type/fonts. Most of the techniques used then was image-replacement with text-indentation.

The web became nicer with proper web typography. Although the standards are still lacking, CSS3 is trying to pick up the loose ends. No more Arial, Times New Roman, and crap. Let’s dictate our own style, NOW~

Typekit is one such great avenue to get nice fonts and they host it from their servers. For free fonts serving, there’s Google web fonts, well, mostly they provide similar service. But, if you know that there’s much more deep differences in typography than just the font families, e.g. text-numerals, multiple glyphs, true Italics, etc., you’ll know which service is a better.

Longing of the Wind—from Chronotorius by Bad Dudes Love the...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:55:00 -0500

Longing of the Wind—from Chronotorius by Bad Dudes

Love the music.

A remix from one of the favourite games from my childhood video game days.

Seriously son? I Can’t Believe… My Son… Is...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:45:00 -0500

Seriously son?

I Can’t Believe…

My Son…

Is Using…

Internet Explorer…!!

“Someone’s gonna get hurt real bad…”—Russell Peters

HTML5 “Cool Shit on the Web!”—Overheard.This is the...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:37:00 -0500

HTML5

“Cool Shit on the Web!”—Overheard.

This is the saving grace that will probably kick off stupid plugins like flash and silverlight for watching videos. Those 2 monsters mostly suck up all your computer’s RAM and take up lots of CPU load. Let’s not forget about insecurities like virus intrusion, exploits and more that comes with them.

With video tag as part of the HTML5 specs, we’re good to go. Hopefully, M$ and their user-slaves will see to IE’s demise soon, and that new version(rumored IE10) is going to catch up.

The big “BUT” is IE9, which is much better than its predecessors(in web standards) but didn’t adopt much HTML5, is VISTA and above only. IE10 ships with Windoze 7 only!

Seriously, do you think those layman user-slaves under M$’s tyrrany knows how to upgrade, or even willing to part with their old windoze version and cash just up upgrade the default web browser?

How To Make Your Life More Awesome With CSS3 Media...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:20:00 -0500

CSS

How To Make Your Life More Awesome With CSS3 Media Queries

Brings my headache down another level grasping with the unknown. The medium in which people use to interact/access the internet comes in all shapes and sizes.

Number one headache: Screen width/height.

“Good Game!”, as my friends used to tell me when I’m in deep shit or losing in a game.

Seriously, GG.

Paradox of Choice by Barry SchwartzApplies very much to Frontend...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:10:00 -0500

Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz
Applies very much to Frontend Development of user interface!
Economic’s basic assumption of Love of Variety in choices, breaks down when you overshoot the threshold for human’s cognitive limit for decision-making.
Where does one draw the line from too little, to too many?