See http://www.pythonchallenge.com

Addicting. For folks (like me) who like this kind of thing. For others, perhaps just dumb. Or infuriating.

Years ago -- many, many years ago -- I vaguely remember a similar game with a name like "insanity" or something like that. Now there's http://www.notpron.com …

Visit Packt Publishing today for the $5 eBook Bonanza.

https://www.packtpub.com.

eBooks and videos at a discount through something like the 6th of January.

We autodidacts are rejoicing.

Specifically, I can look at some of the Scala and Hadoop titles. I'm working with folks who have Hadoop but …

How does one get started developing software? What's the first step?

When you come to this craft -- or sullen art -- without a background except as a user, how do you get started writing code?

It's not easy. Indeed, developing software may be one the hardest things there is. Really, really …

See http://madexpo.us/ The Mid-Atlantic Developer Expo. In my backyard (more-or-less). There's going to be this: http://madexpo.us/Sessions/384 and this: http://madexpo.us/Sessions/385 I'm looking forward to http://madexpo.us/Sessions/339, which I'm certainly going to attend. Many other sessions look like fun …

Looks like fun: Mid-Atlantic Developer Expo. June 27-29 2012 in Hampton, VA. Got a nice reminder through the 757 Labs mailing list. Community is a good thing.

A recent question.

i came up with two options.

1. building skills 1 (+ other references)... then algorithms & data structures.... then your books 2 & 3

or

2. your three books 1,2 & 3... then algo & ds kindly help me decide so i can start soon.

I have two pieces of advice …

My books (Building Skills in Programming, Building Skills in Python and Building Skills in OO Design) develop a steady stream of email. [Also, as a side note, I need to move them to the me.com server, Apple is decommissioning the homepage.mac.com domain.]

The mail falls into several …

We're not really talking about "Learning Styles" as much as "Denial Styles". This is a list of responses to "Astonishment" I've seen.

We're not talking about the Kübler-Ross model of grief, although this is similar.

However, the response to astonishment isn't a "progression" toward acceptance. Some folks simply don't like …

Once I learned C++, all my C programming became poor-man's OO.

• Every "class" became a C structure type.
• Every class structure was implemented as a header file that defined the structure and a bunch of method functions.
• Each method function would have a "self" argument, which was a pointer to …