derekchiang

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"I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time." -- Blaise Pascal

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"Logging into Google+ feels like logging into a seminar, or stumbling into the wrong conference room at an airport Marriott. It looks like a cubicle farm and smells like a hospital. Posting anything on Google+ is like talking into a pillow." -- BuzzFeed

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derekchiang

How Our CS Curriculum Is Becoming Easier, and Why This Probably Isn't a Good Idea

Let me start off by saying that I have the uttermost respect for all the faculty members of the fantastic Cornell Computer Science Department. I have been enjoying the education ever since I came here and I've become a much better budding software engineer / computer scientist than I was only half a year ago, thanks to all the amazing professors, TAs, and classmates from and with whom I have been learning.

However, I've noticed a trend that is making me quite uneasy. The CS curriculum, for some reason, is becoming easier. The hard courses are still pretty hard, but the easier courses, in particular CS1110 and CS2110, which traditionally together make up an introductory sequel which a student has to complete before he can affiliate with the computer science major, have been made easier.

As most CS majors probably know, CS1110 has undergone a major redesign over the last summer. Before the 2012-13 academic year, CS1110 w

derekchiang

# Adopted from: https://github.com/dansdom/extend
# Translated using js2coffee

extend = ->
  options = undefined
  name = undefined
  src = undefined
  copy = undefined
  copyIsArray = undefined
  clone = undefined

derekchiang

getExtension = (filename) ->
  i = filename.lastIndexOf '.'
  return if i < 0 then '' else filename.substr (i+1)

derekchiang

baseName = (str) ->
  base = new String(str).substring(str.lastIndexOf("/") + 1)
  base = base.substring(0, base.lastIndexOf(".")) unless base.lastIndexOf(".") is -1
  return base

derekchiang

# for erlang

apt-get install fop
apt-get install libncurses5-dev
apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk
apt-get install unixodbc-dev
apt-get install g++
apt-get install make
apt-get install libssl-dev

derekchiang

#!/usr/bin/env python

import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer
from argparse import ArgumentParser
import socket

parser = ArgumentParser(
    description='Serve static files in the current directory.')

derekchiang

// Compile with rustc 0.9-pre (727b70d 2013-11-17 21:11:24 -0800)

#[feature(managed_boxes)];

extern mod extra;

use extra::json;
use std::io::stdio;
use extra::serialize::Encodable;

derekchiang

fn split_owned_vec<T>(mut v: ~[T], index: uint) -> (~[T], ~[T]) {
    assert!(index <= v.len());

    let new_len = v.len() - index;
    let mut new_v = vec::with_capacity(v.len() - index);
    unsafe {
        ptr::copy_nonoverlapping_memory(new_v.as_mut_ptr(), v.as_ptr().offset(index as int), new_len);
        v.set_len(index);
        new_v.set_len(new_len);
    }

derekchiang

extern mod extra;
extern mod sync;
use sync::mutex::{StaticMutex, MUTEX_INIT};
use std::os;

static mut LOCK: StaticMutex = MUTEX_INIT;

fn work() {
    for _ in range(0, 10000000) {
        unsafe {