Category: Random

Learning how to write programs for computers can be difficult if you don’t have a good learning method. And thus codecademy was created—a site that aims to enable it’s users to teach and learn how to code.

I do not recall how I came to visit the codecademy site for the first time, other than that it happened around a week ago. The site offers a number of courses—all of them gratis—and I decided to select the Python course (because I happen to like Monty Python). The site is very nice to use and beginning a lesson is pretty straightforward, once you sign up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that you do not even have to have a so-called IDE or programming editor installed on your computer, nor the interpreter/compiler for that matter. All coding and running of your code takes place within the browser or on their server. I think this is a huge convenience.

Each course is divided up into topics and every topic is again subdivided into exercises. All the exercises can be completed from within the convenience of your own browser and successfully completing a set of exercises earns you credit. Great, if boasting about your score turns you on. While all this sounds nice in theory, in practice things are a little bit different.

You see, in order to successfully complete exercises your code and/or the output of your program may be checked. This is done automatically, by parsing the lines of your code and/or output of your program. If your code does not meet certain requirements—such as using a specified variable name, or method name—then you will not get credit for completing the exercise of the exercise (even if your code works!) The site also suffers from bugs—sometimes you may write valid code that nevertheless only passes after reloading the page in your browser. That is really annoying. Furthermore, I find the selection of programming languages to be rather limited. At the time of this writing there are no courses for C, C++, nor Java, nor Fortran and PHP to name a few examples. Finally, it also seems that the courses are severely lacking when it comes to more advanced topics such as Graphical User Interfaces and Networking, or as one user lamented on the forum page after completing the last exercise “Now what?”. I think this is a pity. But the project appears to be rather new and hopefully new exercises and courses will soon follow.

On the whole, I think it’s a very nice idea and would encourage anyone to try codecademy—if only to get a small idea of what programming is about. Just as long as you realize that you will only be able to learn the basics…for now at least.

During the latest episode of the widely acclaimed sitcom “The Big Bang Theory”—episode 12, “The Egg Salad Equivalency”—we observe “Rajeesh Koothrappali” complaining that “not one breakfast cereal mascot is a girl” and “it’s a total breakfast sausage fest”. During his rant he also lists pretty much every known breakfast cereal mascot , but then ends this itemization with “… the Honey Nut Cheerio bee, I believe his name is ‘Buzz’.”

Now, as a biologist I feel it is my duty to point out that the organism depicted on the Honey Nut Cheerio cereal box is in fact clearly not a male “drone” bee, but a female bee (albeit highly anthropomorphized—bees do not possess tooth enamel in their mouthparts, for example). I am certain of this because you can clearly see a stinger on Buzz and only female bees possess such a stinger, since it is actually a modified part of the female reproductive system—a so-called ovipositor.

We are thus left with the conclusion that Buzz is in fact the unfortunate sufferer of a gender identity disorder. And that—but for one exception—Raj has a good point. 😉

First of all, the movie begins with the statement that 30 years from the year 2044 (the year in which the protagonist lives) it will be impossible to dispose of a body and it is actually more convenient to use a space-time teleportation machine to send a victim back to a precise location at a precise time 30 years into the past and then have an assassin wait there, shoot the victim and dispose of the body. Well, excuse me all over the place if I think this is one of the most ridiculous plots I have ever come across in a movie. And the rest of the movie fares no better.

At some point during this movie, for example, we observe Bruce Willis sitting in a diner as he says the following to his younger-self, sitting across the table—“I don’t wanna talk about time-travel shit”. And that one sentence—I am absolutely positive—was included in the movie to resolve all the problems the audience might come up with regarding temporal paradoxes and inconsistencies in the storyline. Well, I’m sorry but that’s just lame.

Almost nothing redeems this movie. It is way too long because it includes a lot of scenes that should have been trashed in the editing room, the story is totally unbelievable, the setting of the movie sucks ass (a future where they have freakin’ hovering rocket motorcycles and the (rich) protagonist chooses to drives a crappy 1990’s mazda mx-3?—yeah right, very likely) and the acting is mediocre at best. The only thing this movie has going for it is a small surprising twist almost at the end of the movie. But I can assure you it’s only a minor twist and does not redeem the movie in the least.

I found watching this movie to be a waste of my time. Avoid it.