Made by Alex Roman — original available in MP4 format here (torrent).
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“MIT 6.00 — Introduction to Computer Science and Programming” is one of the best introductions to programming I’ve seen, and I guess I shouldn’t expect less from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 24 video recordings of Computer Science lectures (totalling roughly 20 hours) by Professors Eric Grimson and John Guttag, current and former heads of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. The course focuses on, quite simply, teaching you how to think like a programmer and solve problems computationally. Historically, LISP was the language of choice for Computer Science introductions at MIT, but was since replaced by every imperative programmer’s new darling, Python.
To quote the overview given in the first video, the course revolves around:
- Computational thinking
- Understanding code
- Understanding abilities and limits
- Mapping problems into computation
I highly recommend watching this if you’re new to programming, a hobby programmer, or even if you’re pretty well-versed — I’m sure there are nuggets of useful information inthere for everyone. Give Lecture 1 a look; if you like it, I’ve embedded the entire course after the jump, but it can also be found on the official course website, along with assignments, exams and solutions.
Lecture 1: Goals of the course; what is computation; introduction to data types, operators, and variables
I just got back from watching District 9 in the cinema, and wow, what a refreshing experience! It’s been a long time since I’ve watched a movie that was awesome (in the big guns, space ships and robots kind of way), smart, scary (intellectually), gory, and fun. It messes with your mind several times over and it feels wonderful. Take a look at the latest trailer for the movie:
I was skeptic after watching the trailer, but it turned out to be more of a distraction than a summarization of the film. Without revealing too much, let me just say that it is worth watching District 9 even if the trailer leaves you thinking it might just be a Resident Evil clone (it’s not).
District 9 is a bloody good action movie (emphasis on bloody) that challenges the viewer’s perception of humankind. I find it hard to believe that its budget was set at a meager USD $30,000,000.
Now my wait for the sequel begins. I wonder if it will be able to successfully expand on the message conveyed so exceptionally by Neill Blomkamp in the first movie.
Procedurally generated landscape flyby demo with impressive graphics and audio, and oh yeah — a total size of four kilobytes! Absolutely mind-blowing. You can run the original 4kb demo application (Windows) yourself if you have a powerful machine.
When you’re watching the flyby, keep in mind that it’s 41 times smaller than Notepad and 625 times smaller than the everyday Visual C++ alarm clock application I happen to be using. It’s quite amazing what can be accomplished with such a small amount of code.
“It seems like twittering is just randomly bragging about your unexceptional life”. Brilliant comedy clip. Twitter users beware, this may sadden you.
