Computer Science – Learn By Doing

If you could be part of any world record, what would it be?

This Icebreaker is from Rob Walker, TAoN. I think I will use this in class, especially with the 2nd big summer heat wave upon us.

The back story: Mallory says she was talking to friends about the recent record-breaking temperatures in Canada — presumably a record most of us would prefer not to be part of. But that led her to this question. “I think it would be a neat little insight into what someone thinks is cool, and into their interests and personality,” she explains. “Do they want to break a solo, risky record (e.g., highest dive), or a goofy one (e.g., most straws in the mouth), or a big group one (e.g., largest round of ‘Ring Around the Rosie’), or a serious one (e.g., most patents owned)?”

Developer Survey Results 2018

https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/

This year, over 100,000 developers told us how they learn, build their careers, which tools they’re using, and what they want in a job.

Each year, we ask the developer community about everything from their favorite technologies to their job preferences. This year marks the eighth year we’ve published our Annual Developer Survey results—with the largest number of respondents yet. Over 100,000 developers took the 30-minute survey this past January.

This year, we covered a few new topics ranging from artificial intelligence to ethics in coding. Here are a few of the top takeaways from this year’s results:

DevOps and machine learning are important trends in the software industry today. Languages and frameworks associated with these kinds of works are on the rise, and developers working in these areas command the highest salaries.
Only tiny fractions of developers say that they would write unethical code or that they have no obligation to consider the ethical implications of code, but beyond that, respondents see a lot of ethical gray. Developers are not sure how they would report ethical problems, and have differing ideas about who ultimately is responsible for unethical code.
Developers are overall optimistic about the possibilities that artificial intelligence offers, but are not in agreement about what the dangers of AI are.
Python has risen in the ranks of programming languages on our survey, surpassing C# in popularity this year, much like it surpassed PHP last year.
When assessing a prospective job, different kinds of developers apply different sets of priorities. Women say their highest priorities are company culture and opportunities for professional development, while men say their highest priorities are compensation and working with specific technologies.

Want to dive into the results yourself? In a few weeks, we’ll make the anonymized results of the survey available for download under the Open Database License (ODbL). We look forward to seeing what you find!

Are You Ready to Change The Game?

https://play.google.com/about/changethegame/#challenge

Change The Game’s mission is to make mobile gaming truly for everyone by celebrating and empowering women as creators and players. We’re calling on the next generation of game-makers to share their mobile game design ideas and what they want to see for the future of gaming.

We’ve joined forces with Girls Make Games and ESA Foundation to challenge teens to use their creativity and skills to develop a game idea, and to take their first step towards change.

The top 5 finalists will win a VIP trip to an exclusive experience at E3 in Los Angeles. There, they can showcase their game ideas and join a celebration of women in gaming. The Grand Prize Winner will also receive a $10,000 college scholarship, a $15,000 technology contribution to their school, and more.

Improving Diversity in Computer Science

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2017-10-10/improving-diversity-in-computer-science-video

From the NYTIMES: The Sublime and Scary Future of Cameras With A.I. Brains

From the NYTimes https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/27/technology/future-cameras-ai-brains.html

Something strange, scary and sublime is happening to cameras, and it’s going to complicate everything you knew about pictures. Cameras are getting brains.

Until the past few years, just about all cameras — whether smartphones or point-and-shoots or CCTV surveillance — were like eyes disconnected from any intelligence.

They captured anything you put in front of them, but they didn’t understand a whit about what they were seeing. Even basic facts about the world eluded them. It’s crazy, for instance, that in 2018, your smartphone doesn’t automatically detect when you’ve taken naked pictures of yourself and offer to house them under an extra-special layer of security.

But all this is changing. There’s a new generation of cameras that understand what they see. They’re eyes connected to brains, machines that no longer just see what you put in front of them, but can act on it — creating intriguing and sometimes eerie possibilities.

At first, these cameras will promise to let us take better pictures, to capture moments that might not have been possible with every dumb camera that came before. That’s the pitch Google is making with Clips, a new camera that went on sale on Tuesday. It uses so-called machine learning to automatically take snapshots of people, pets and other things it finds interesting.