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jmaicher

12 karma · joined October 14, 2011

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jmaicher··on My problem with computer science pseudocode
Unfortunately I can't see the pseudo code you are criticizing. But I have a degree in CS and I'm familiar with the notion of pseudo code and the way it's usually written in academic papers.

I agree with you that the way code is written matters a lot in practice. But in academic papers, usually the idea, the runtime and the correctness of algorithms have a higher priority than implementation details. Sure, you can write more readable pseudo code, but I haven't come across an algorithm in a paper that I wasn't able to understand. In fact, I do often like the way it is written.

Who says that computer scientists are necessarily great programmers? That's not the case. Universities (at least in Germany) doesn't teach you how to be an "elite grade developer", as you said. They teach fundamental concepts in computer science.

Why recursion? If you approach a problem with mathematics then thinking in terms of functions and recursion is very natural. Recursion is a fundamental mathematical concept and it's often easier to reason about recursive functions (inductive proofs).

jmaicher··on Show HN: WebcamSwiper - a JS library that watches for hand swipes in the air
Well, it's opt-in. So unknowing access is (at least without further actions) not possible.

getUserMedia: "Prompts the user for permission to use their Web cam or other video or audio input." [1]

By the way: The example doesn't work for me either.

[1] http://dev.w3.org/2011/webrtc/editor/getusermedia.html

jmaicher··on [dead]
It was already on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3982142
jmaicher··on OO JS in 15mins or Less
There is no zelda.prototype. It should have been:

  Game.prototype.heartIt = function() { 
    console.log( "I heart " + this.title ); 
  };
See: http://jsfiddle.net/a9asJ/1/