Tagged "code"

Notes on Fred Brooks's 'No Silver Bullet'

I had a simple problem. An OCR engine found text anywhere on a PDF page. A separate parser could tell me whether a rectangle on that page contained text, an image, both, or neither. Given a piece of OCR output, I needed to decide whether it came from a text layer or from pixels that merely looked like text. When neither answer was reliable, the system would say “unknown”.

The problem was easy to state, easy to understand and easy to test. So why did it take me hours?

The Bridge of Asses: Learning Coding with Novices

Over the last few years, I have been deeply involved with the IIT-M Programme in Data Science & Applications - as a student, a mentor and an analytics consultant. The programme provides diplomas and bachelor’s degrees in data science and applications. I’m often asked why I’m so invested in the programme - especially since I’m already an experienced data scientist.

At least three people are mad at me for being in the programme. One of them thinks that I’ve unfairly claimed a higher education seat I don’t need - which would be true if this was a conventional program with limited seats. But it’s a MOOC.

A Process for Readable Code

I took a course on data structures and algorithms over the last few months. It is being offered as a part of IIT Madras’ Online Degree Program in Data Science and Programming, taught by Prof Madhavan Mukund. The program is a MOOC in a true sense, with tens of thousands of students enrolling each year. The DSA course itself is offered every trimester, and sees an average of ~700 enrollments every time. It is easy to see how communication becomes critical in running a MOOC at this scale. There is, of course, the operational and logistical communication that goes into the smooth running of the course. But communicating the content of the course is more relevant (the course is also highly interactive - in addition to weekly office hours, there are Discourse forums where students, TAs and faculty are active).