The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming journal is teaming up with the Onward! conference regarding essays. In this year’s Onward! Essays’ Instructions for Authors, authors are given the choice of publication venue. They can either do it as before — i.e. publish the essay in the Onward! proceedings book, published by the ACM; or they can […]

I’ve been relatively low key about something that I’m very excited about, so, after several months of planning, and a first, somewhat quiet, submission deadline, it’s time to release my enthusiasm. A group of us have started a new conference called <Programming>  associated with a new open-access journal called The Art, Science and Engineering of Programming. Here […]

The recent scandal at UC Berkeley’s Astronomy department regarding a star Professor being accused of sexual harassment and consequently resigning from his position, has, once again, had me thinking about how institutions and organizations deal with sexual harassment. There are a few problems with how sexual harassment policies, and their enforcement, are handled, and I […]

I’ve been a Professor for almost 13 years. During these 13 years, I have seen investment in routine academic IT infrastructures decrease steadily, while at the same time being encouraged/pushed to use commercial infrastructures. Academic administrators seem to be mostly preoccupied with the 1% of academic work that requires high performance computing, large clusters and super high […]

This is a post about CS education. It is prompted by a series of posts by Mark Guzdial in which he criticizes the pervasive belief among CS educators that when it comes to programming, there’s not much an instructor can do: some students get it, others don’t; it’s all in genetics or other external factors […]

I just came back from a week at Hacker School in New York — they invited me to join them as a resident. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and, before I forget, here are my impressions and a bit of a comparison with the more traditional educational programs that I’m used to.

I’m happy to announce that my book Exercises in Programming Style is now available for pre-order from Amazon, and that it will be shipping starting June 9! This is the book behind the talks I gave last year at StrangeLoop and GOTO. This is the story of how this book came to life, the inspirations […]

I’m officially making up these new words, because they correspond to activities that I do on a regular basis and that I need to convey to my students. I hope that by giving these concepts their very own words, they will lose the threatening overtone that these remarks usually come with — because students will […]

One of the most brutal things to adapt in life after college is the sheer amount of feedback, criticism and rejection that come with real life. This happens in just about any direction one decides to go: graduate school, industry, public service or self-employment. It may not feel that way for students, but school is […]

This post was prompted by a Facebook interaction regarding Dijktra’s famous “GO TO Statement Considered Harmful” article, a letter he sent to the editor of CACM back in 1968. Seen through the lens of currently accepted research reporting practices, Dijsktra’s article reads like a technical rant, something that we might find in today’s blogs, but […]