nondeterministic . net

Pink Lemon Drink (official drink of the Pink Lemon Company, for those few who get that joke) is lemonade with raspberry juice. Excellent.

Yesterday, the lecturer in Software Design asked who had programmed in Java using Eclipse: all hands. Who had programmed in Java using the command line? No hands, much scoffing. But later, while reviewing certain properties of Java, he had to field questions about the CLASSPATH. In a graduate class in the faculty of computer science, to have so many people whose ability to program in a language has no solid foundation but rather rests crutched on an IDE is questionable. For them to be satisfied with such a situation is sad.

This morning, the lecturer in a seminar on PCPs turned out to have worked with Madhu Sudan and guest lectured in 6.841/18.405; Steve might remember him as the Israeli guy with the kippa. I had my moment of elitism in that lecture when he gave a historical overview of PCP research. Goldwasser, check. Micali, check. Sipser, check. Sudan, check. Spielman, check. I’ll never match their accomplishments, but at least I sat in their lectures.

Suppose the semester project for Introduction to Software Engineering was the design and implementation of a room reservation system.

Suppose the first recitation in Introduction to Software Engineering was cancelled on account of a room reservation conflict that bumped the recitation and its PowerPoint-toting instructor to a room with no projector.

That would be kinda funny. And no, I’m not taking the class, I’m grading the homeworks.

In other news, I’ve become aware that the comment form is somewhat broken at the moment, which explains why comment volume dropped so precipitously from almost none to none. I’ll fix it eventually.