Defining Chaos In Order

Well, sort of.

Thanks to Academic Earth, a friggin’ gift, you can follow (video) lectures given at universities like Stanford, MIT, Harvard & Yale on some of the most popular subjects. There once was a time when you couldn’t wait to get out of school, I suppose it makes sense to have a time where you’d do anything to learn new things.

Especially things you choose. And only those subjects you really like (did anyone say obligated French?).

The videos include all sort of subjects, such as Computer Science (/love), Mathematics, Engineering, … all explained by well-respected professors.

I’m currently following the Computer Science III: Programming Paradigms course, which features a lot of interesting topics such as:

• #1 Introduction: Procedural Paradigm vs. Object-Oriented Paradigm, Assembly, Concurrent Programming Overview, Example of Data Sharing Issues with Concurrent Programming, …
• #8 Heap Management: How Information about Allocations are Stored in the Heap, Result of Freeing Memory Improperly, Actual Sizes of Heap Allocations – Nearest Power of 2, Management of Free Blocks on the Heap by Storing Addresses in the Blocks of Free Memory, Algorithms for Choosing Which Free Block to Allocate, …
• #9 How Code Snippet Is Translated Into Assembly Instructions
• #14 Sequential Programming vs Concurrent Programming
• #24 Overarching Features of Python: Scripting Language, Imperative, Object-Oriented, Functional, Use of Whitespace and Tabs, Python Environment, Execution of Basic Statements,…

There are many other (complete!) courses to follow, such as Understanding Computers and the Internet (Harvard), Computer System Engineering (MIT), Computer Science I: Programming Methodology (Stanford) and many more!

I can only assume this will eat yet another chunk of my already severely shortened sleeping period. Oh, did I just hear the faint sound of coffee beans crushing?

Matti Tech academic earth, course, education, harvard, mit, programming, video, yale

Here are some (really) good ones (the layout can get messy from time to time, but they’re still viewable).

*Edit; this has been getting a bit more attention than I anticipated, and wasn’t ment to be this “popular”. A lot of the comics were found on StackOverflow.com, where I added some of my personal favorites. Read more…

Matti Humor comic, dilbert, lol, programming, xkcd

Every programmer has his method of doing things, his own set of rules he follows. Here are a few small things I do, syntax-wise. I’m curious to see what you do, and how often you change other people’s code so it reflects your own syntax. Read more…

Matti programming coding, habbit, programming

In between statements like “who don’t men ask for directions” and “why are women always right (in their mind)?”, there’s a new kid on the block: do women write better, more understandable code, than men? Read more…

Matti Tech male vs female, programming

No need to use complicated or extensive libraries (such as PEAR) to create Excel pages. Just take advantage of the “smart” part of Excel; its ability to parse an HTML table to a nice Excel page.

Just create a regular .PHP file, where you output your data in a nice little html-table. Then place the following snippet in the top of that file (no output can happen before these lines, as they change your headers – so place these all the way at the top):

header("Content-type: application/vnd.ms-excel");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=excel.xls");

And it’s just that easy. If you open the page, you’ll see a download-window asking you where to place the file. The headers will tell your computer that it’s an Excel-file, which will parse your html-table (assuming you’ve written it without errors) and display it nicely.

Matti PHP excel, PHP, programming