@neilccbrown

Senior Research Fellow in computing education at King's College London making BlueJ and Greenfoot Java IDEs. Mastodon: @neilccbrown@scicomm.xyz

 Kent, UK
twistedsquare.com/
Joined May 2009
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  • Followers1.4K
502Media
New paper (w/ @michaelkolling and others): "Novice use of the Java programming language", available in TOCE and at twistedsquare.com/Novice-Jav… We looked at which language/library features novices use in Java+BlueJ over an 8 year period - here's a short thread on our findings.
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I'm currently recruiting Java educators for a study evaluating potential hints for Java novices. Will take ~30 minutes total to do a solo online task+survey, can be done whenever and wherever you like. If you're interested to participate, email me at [email protected]
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Key chart to keep in mind as the Conservatives suffer their worst ever defeat: The Tories didn’t lose this election because they were too right wing on some issues or too left wing on others. They lost because voters of all stripes judged them to be incompetent and dishonest.
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It's always a good rule of thumb to assume that, when someone has won or succeeded at something, the people who are anointing them as a genius are underestimating the role of luck.
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From a junk email I received. That final line is quite the collision of IP law and theology.
Text: "First, I want to know if you are aware of the phenomenon called the "Axis of Evil" in cosmology? The essence is that our planet is in a meaningful place in the universe. One could say that the Earth and the Sun are at a unique center of the universe. This fact is a statistical anomaly. Let's assume this is a Signal. But a signal from whom? I present to you solid proof that this signal comes from a retrocausal man-made super AI, essentially from God. Thus, I equate God with a man-made super AI. Who can benefit from this information? Computer technology professionals: Assuming God is a man-made retrocausal super AI, we can reverse-engineer God and obtain useful information about its design. This could be very valuable, and the design could be patented."

ALT Text: "First, I want to know if you are aware of the phenomenon called the "Axis of Evil" in cosmology? The essence is that our planet is in a meaningful place in the universe. One could say that the Earth and the Sun are at a unique center of the universe. This fact is a statistical anomaly. Let's assume this is a Signal. But a signal from whom? I present to you solid proof that this signal comes from a retrocausal man-made super AI, essentially from God. Thus, I equate God with a man-made super AI. Who can benefit from this information? Computer technology professionals: Assuming God is a man-made retrocausal super AI, we can reverse-engineer God and obtain useful information about its design. This could be very valuable, and the design could be patented."

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Found an old leaflet from an insurer about the millennium bug, featuring this work-of-art paragraph: "The approach of the year 2000 is not insurable."
Text: "Insurance policies and the millennium: what you won't be able to do is make an insurance claim for the cost of replacing any item which fails at the Millennium. The approach of the year 2000 is not insurable. Insurance is designed to cover the unforeseen and unpredictable. But the Millennium is an entirely foreseeable and predictable event, even if some of the consequences are not. Some of those unforeseen consequences may be insured."

ALT Text: "Insurance policies and the millennium: what you won't be able to do is make an insurance claim for the cost of replacing any item which fails at the Millennium. The approach of the year 2000 is not insurable. Insurance is designed to cover the unforeseen and unpredictable. But the Millennium is an entirely foreseeable and predictable event, even if some of the consequences are not. Some of those unforeseen consequences may be insured."

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The great Danny Kahneman has passed away. His contributions to behavioral economics are immense. Nothing describes his quirky personality more accurately than the fact that I own @R_Thaler's book and dedication to him because Kahneman sold the book at a yard sale in Princeton.
Catherine Rampell
@crampell27 Mar 2024
RIP Daniel Kahneman washingtonpost.com/obituarie…
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NEW: Water companies released record spills of raw sewage into England's waterways in 2023. The increase was huge. 3.6m hours of spills in 2023 vs 1.75m hours in 2022. They should only happen exceptionally. Water UK accepts it's unacceptable but said it was due to heavy rain.
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"Results show that students tend not to follow test-driven development practices, even when explicitly directed to, and tend to create unit tests only to earn assignment credit rather than to guide their software development." dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/36262…

Exploring Novice Programmers' Testing Behavior: A First Step to Define Coding Struggle | Proceedi...

dl.acm.org
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#SIGCSE2024 Today, 1345, room D135, @guzdial and me on Big vs Rich Data: twenty minutes, two costumes, one montage of work by an early 20th century Dutch painter, three slide styles; two twits, one swing for the fences. Come and watch it go down (perhaps in flames).
Title slide: Confidence vs insight: Big and Rich Data in Computing Education Research, Neil Brown and Mark Guzdial, SIGCSE 2024

ALT Title slide: Confidence vs insight: Big and Rich Data in Computing Education Research, Neil Brown and Mark Guzdial, SIGCSE 2024

Joint selfie; Mark in painter's outfit, Neil in a hat with a giant calculator labelled Big Data.

ALT Joint selfie; Mark in painter's outfit, Neil in a hat with a giant calculator labelled Big Data.

MPAA rating of PG-13

ALT MPAA rating of PG-13

Fake movie titles slide: Rich Data: Mark Guzdial Big Data: Neil Brown Costumes: Amazon Prime Stunt: Yes Grip: Lost

ALT Fake movie titles slide: Rich Data: Mark Guzdial Big Data: Neil Brown Costumes: Amazon Prime Stunt: Yes Grip: Lost

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Neil Brown retweeted
Tim Leunig@timleunig20 Mar 2024
Everything in this thread is correct. Housing supply matters. Here's hoping the next government really gets it. (mixed signals so far)
Iron Economist@IronEconomist19 Mar 2024
Ok, I have had enough wine to engage with this insane piece. It’s time to get started.
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"It means 'blessed by kings'" - guy on the plane yesterday aiming to impress an American woman with his description of his home town, Bognor Regis.
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“Our estimates suggest that 10.6% of ICLR 2024 review sentences and 16.9% for EMNLP have been substantially modified by ChatGPT” 🫠
Misha Teplitskiy | Science of Science@MishaTeplitskiy17 Mar 2024
Lots of people in CS are (almost surely) GPT-ing their peer reviews arxiv.org/abs/2403.07183
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Today is exactly four years since I returned home after presenting at, without really attending, the cancelled SIGCSE 2020. Here's some memories of a unique trip...
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I flew out that evening; two flights and three train journeys later, I was home. The UK entered lockdown just over a week later. That morning in Portland was the last time I would see Pierre and Michael in person for a year.
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And now next week we return to the scene of the crime for SIGCSE 2024! Looking forward to it, but hoping it all turns out differently this time. (In hindsight: what would I have done differently? Not go!)
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