Since there are so many "sql people" hanging around on this site, I thought I might as well mention about this one here..
I was taking an SQL course at school, and to make it slightly less boring for myself, I built, as the course project, an interactive SQL tutorial. It's available at http://iki.fi/sol/galaxql.html for windows, mac os x as well as source code that has compiled out of the box for at least some linux variants =)
The tutorial takes a slightly different approach than most of the SQL tutorials out there. You have a 3d, opengl-rendered galaxy, which you can manipulate using SQL. The virtual teacher explains SQL concepts with examples that you can try out, and gives tasks for you to figure out.
While I did try to make it as good as possible, it's bound to have some mistakes, but based on the mail I've received, there shouldn't be anything major..
The tutorial has received some positive reviews, and is, as far as I
know, in use in at least four universities in three countries. Quite
possibly more. Still can't get slashdot to post a news story about it, though.
And yes, I did receive "perfect" score from the course.. =)
Sol_HSA
@Sol_HSA
Best posts made by Sol_HSA
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Galaxql
Latest posts made by Sol_HSA
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RE: What's Wrong with Indian HeadHunters?
@fennec said:
Remember, there's a button to make them go away. :b
In "the last lecture", there's a nice suggestion to add to this: always hang up while *you* are talking.
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RE: What's with the TDWTF email notifications?
Yes, seems to work with the HTML mails on. Oh well.
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RE: What's with the TDWTF email notifications?
Hm, I had HTML mails set to off. Maybe it's less of a headache with it turned on, which, in itself, is somewhat of a WTF.
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What's with the TDWTF email notifications?
Seriously.
And that one doesn't even include quoted blocks from earlier mails.
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RE: What's Wrong with Indian HeadHunters?
Don't know about Indian headhunters specifically, but my experience with headhunters in general is that they're pretty clueless as to when it comes to candidates. But you have to remember that you're not their customer, you're their product. And the easiest way for them to make a buck is brute force.
The funniest offer I got was to go to Germany (I don't speak german, and would require relocation which I said I won't do), coding Symbian (which I expressly mention in my CV that I won't do) for Microsoft (which would be a pro or a con, depending).
All that said, it's been ages since I got a call from a headhunter. Maybe I'm a has-been now. =)
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RE: Tale from an interview
I once had a great interview. I was interviewing for a position in a well-known software house, and the position seemed like a pretty good match for me.
I arrived, and the person who interviewed me took me to a small conference room, and explained that usually they give homework to all applicants, but he had seen enough of my code that it wasn't necessary. Still, he asked me to take a glance at some printed code and say what's wrong with it. I spotted a memory leak immediately, muttered about it and continued to analyse some more complex code, at which point he pulled the paper back saying that yes, that's exactly what he was after.
The interview continued by asking some technical questions, like whether I'd done any inter-process communication, to which I said no, but could list a dozen different ways of doing so. In general the whole tone of the discussion became less of an interview and more of hey, we're among friends here over time. I left in high spirits.
Two weeks later I got a totally cold corporate "no thanks" answer from the same guy. I was rather stupified.
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RE: Why do people ignore advice?
@serguey123 said:
I'm not the brightest person on Earth nor the best programmer, not even close, however when I give advice I expect people to actually listen or pretend to. What is the point in asking for advice and then doing whatever you please.
Surprisingly many people "ask for advice" when they're already dead set on what they're planning to do, and just want validation for what they're doing.
This can be seen in various circles. My wife frequents a board where professional pet trainers go to, and every now and then someone pops in, and says something like whether their gold fish is happy in the 3-liter vase they're held in, and then get insulted when they're accused of animal cruelty. "It looks happy in there!". As if anyone knows what a happy fish looks like.
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RE: OSS WTF!
I've done some "donothing" functions.
If you're calling a lot of functions through function pointers, and in most cases the pointer should not be NULL, it may make sense to declare a "do nothing" function as a target instead of adding a check for the NULL before every single call.
So, for instance, if 99% of your calls are useful, and only 1% are NULL, it makes sense to take the cost of 1% of pointless empty function call than the 100% checks for NULLness. -
RE: Rational agrument against Hungarian notation?
Pretty much the only good prefix system I've seen so far shows the scope of a variable, and never the type. For instance..
int bar::foo(int aParameter)
{
int local; // no prefix
local = baz(aParameter, mMember);
return gGlobal * local;
} -
Galaxql
Since there are so many "sql people" hanging around on this site, I thought I might as well mention about this one here..
I was taking an SQL course at school, and to make it slightly less boring for myself, I built, as the course project, an interactive SQL tutorial. It's available at http://iki.fi/sol/galaxql.html for windows, mac os x as well as source code that has compiled out of the box for at least some linux variants =)
The tutorial takes a slightly different approach than most of the SQL tutorials out there. You have a 3d, opengl-rendered galaxy, which you can manipulate using SQL. The virtual teacher explains SQL concepts with examples that you can try out, and gives tasks for you to figure out.
While I did try to make it as good as possible, it's bound to have some mistakes, but based on the mail I've received, there shouldn't be anything major..
The tutorial has received some positive reviews, and is, as far as I
know, in use in at least four universities in three countries. Quite
possibly more. Still can't get slashdot to post a news story about it, though.
And yes, I did receive "perfect" score from the course.. =)