sevenproxies

The Person example also seems overly verbose. Does the equivalent Clojure example have private attributes name and age? It looks like the author is accessing the name and age attribute directly instead of using getter methods as defined in the Java version.

    class Person {
        String name;
        int age;
        Person(String name, int age) {this.name = name; this.age = age}
    }

This is still more verbose than the (defrecord person [name age]) but still, I agree with the dodgy examples used.

Disclaimer : I don't know Clojure or similar and therefore I could be missing something. I did a quick search for defining private attributes in Clojure but didn't find any good hits.

permutation([X|XS],YS) :- permutation(XS,ZS),select(X,YS,ZS).

Where is ZS defined? Bear in mind that I only took half a module's worth (6 modules in a year at my university) of Prolog and we really just used it for learning predicate logic.

Nevertheless, using Prolog (especially when my code worked!) blew my mind. In the assignment I had to write a program that mimicked part of an aircraft controller in that each aircraft in it's flightplan had to be separated from all other aircraft. Do you think Prolog will ever become popular (perhaps with the incoming Semantic web) or is it destined for academic work and system proofs only?

Typical way to gain views and make it look like you know what you are talking about (although the author does seem to know good algorithm development). Hell, comparing it to Bogosort is a stretch. Bogosort is not even a naive algorithm.

>The typical path that many people (myself included) have experienced is: total obsession for 1-2 weeks, followed by rapidly waning interest.

This what I experienced. Mutliplayer is fun though, but I can't play the game properly due to bugs (framerate issues, random disconnects / crashes to desktop). I'm not sure if my local JRE has a problem but I have been doing Java development work recently and I've not had any issues.

I think once the bugs have been ironed out and the development process has been refined (to prevent re-occuring bugs) the game can really grow. Recent updates has shown that new features are being added to the game (including reaching out to the mod community) and by the time of proper release the game will have much more to offer.

Unfortunately that isn't an efficient solution when you have hundreds of applications to process. Perhaps this is why degrees are often required for entry-level software positions as someone with a degree is seen to be better employees (compared to the high school drop outs).

One of the reasons I'm currently studying Software Engineering (UK) is to learn about things that will not necessary be taught on a job. Topics such as logic, formal specifications, algorithms and concurrency. It's one thing to know how to use threads etc in a language but you miss out on the underlying theory. I found these topics challenging to understand and thats with a lecture and tutorial (working on exercises from the lecture). I would have given up long ago if I was trying to learn on my own.

Now, this knowledge would be useless if I'm not in a position to guide development of a product but I certainly wouldn't discount a degree (or any formal education) as only being a launching point. I think the general consensus is that the best learning mechanism is a mix of both formal education and work experience. Formal education to learn theory and work experience to solidify the knowledge.