Read this: http://www.forbes.com/sites/emc/2014/06/26/the-hottest-jobs-in-it-training-tomorrows-data-scientists/ Interesting subject areas: Statistics, Machine Learning, Algorithms. I've had questions about data science from folks who (somehow) felt that calculus and differential equations were important parts of data science. I couldn't figure out how they decided that diffeq's …

This is (was?) an epic web site: http://projecteuler.net/about Currently, they're struggling with a security problem. http://forum.projecteuler.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3591 Years ago, I found the site and quickly reached Level 2 by solving a flood of easy problems. Recently, a recruiter strongly …

Why? Why are Enterprise Computers so hard to use? What is it about computers that terrifies corporate IT? They're paying lots of money to have me sit around and wait for mysterious approver folks to decide if I can be given permission to install development tools. (Of course, the real …

https://developer.apple.com/swift/ This lowers the bar for entry to the iOS market. Does it also lower the bar for Mac OS X? Can it be used to write command-line command-line applications ("scripts")? It has a REPL, which means it can do a kind of "just-in-time" compile and …

See this short discussion on a Stingray Reader feature:

https://sourceforge.net/p/stingrayreader/discussion/COBOL/thread/d2132851/?limit=25#2a3a

This turned into an exercise in pure TDD.

<rant>

I'm not a fan of applying TDD in a strict, death-march fashion.

I see the comments on Stack Overflow that …

Read this: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/born-with-curiosity-the-grace-hopper-documentary#home Consider donating to preserve history. Read this: http://www.i-programmer.info/news/82-heritage/7368-crowd-fund-film-about-grace-hopper.html Her legacy is often overshadowed by folks like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

Here's an interesting problem. Implement the split command for mainframe COBOL EBCDIC files with their BDW and RDW headers.

The conventional split can't handle COBOL EBCDIC files because they don't have sensible \n line breaks. Translating an EBCDIC file to ASCII is high-risk because COMP and COMP-3 fields will be …

We'll be digging into Mastering Object-Oriented Python. Chapter 17, specifically.

We'll also be looking at a big refactoring of the Stingray Schema-Based File Reader.

We can identify three species of packages.

One common design is a Simple Package. A directory with an empty __init__.py file. This package name becomes …

Want a copy free? See this contest: http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2014/05/12/ebook-contest-win-a-free-copy-of-mastering-object-oriented-python/.

If you're really interested, I can sign a copy. That will double the shipping cost, so perhaps that's not the best idea.

The bad news is that the errata have started to trickle in …