Has anyone used biocep with AWS? I see a lot of presentations online but nothing that seems to do a thorough job of walking you through the process. There seems to be a lot of complexity to get your head around. I was hoping someone could point me to particularly useful forum threads or [even better] some real tutorials?
Having just heard the author speak at useR2010, I believe that project is dead or has at least morphed into something else.
Related
I've been reading about Ada, which looks like an awesome and mature language. But despite its history and real-world use (and even a pretty good IDE!), it's not very "Internet-popular." So I'm looking for resources now that Google isn't doing much for me anymore. The wikibook has a lot of breadth but was pretty terse and I found it hard to understand. I've checked out the book scene on Amazon, and I'm sure there are a couple good ones, but they are generally older and pretty expensive so I haven't made the plunge yet.
Rosetta Code Ada examples have been helpful, but I'd definitely appreciate something in between that and something big like GNAT.
And if it exists, I'd love a place where I can have some discussions and Q&A that welcomes new Ada programmers. (I'm sure there's probably a comp.lang.ada or something, but ever since I tried asking beginner questions on comp.lang.lisp I tend to be leery of bugging the battle-worn with questions they don't find interesting.)
Anyway I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask in case anyone has recommendations.
Don't go to Ada Home; the Ada community would love to bring it up to date but the owner isn't interested.
The Ada Information Clearinghouse, particularly the 'learning materials' section, is a good start. There's similar information in the 'Free on-line books/courses'. I especially liked John English's book (use this link instead of the one at AdaIC). Others recommend Ada Distilled.
I find that comp.lang.ada is the place to be. Lots of enthusiasts, people with huge experience (even some language designer), but people that don't mind helping newbies too.
There's too an #ada channel in some IRC (perhaps freenode?), that might be a good place for quick Q&A, though I cannot say by personal experience.
Actually, there's a very good list of Ada resources on our very own ada tag wiki, if you click the learn more link.
The nice thing about it is that, through the magic of community moderation, it will never become an embarassing cobweb that nobody can do anything about, unlike some websites I could mention. {cough AdaHome cough}
The community also has a presence here on SO, so feel free to ask questions here too.
Last I checked comp.lang.ada was a hangout for actual compiler writers and language designers, among other folks. For the most part they are really helpful people, and can be dang handy for arcana. But sometimes for simple questions it can be a bit like asking Robert Goddard or Werner von Braun for tips on making your model rocket fly straighter.
comp.lang.ada is a very nice place, and they treat beginners well. I know from experience. Don't be afraid to ask "easy" questions.
For more Ada resources, you could take a look at the Ada Resources page maintained by Ada in Denmark.
It's a mixed collection of old and new. You might find something useful. :)
I second the recommendation for comp.lang.ada, it is quite newbie-friendly--unless you're a student trying to get the members to do your homework for you.
If you're a LinkedIn member, there's some Ada groups there.
The Ada sub-reddit is a site for posting links to news, announcements, questions, and whatnot (I'm the moderator there).
And, self-evidently, here at StackOverflow is a good place for Ada questions as well.
Ada is a language that (undeservedly!) never got enough love, IMO.
Check out http://www.adahome.com/. It looks embarrassingly out-of-date ... but you might stumble across a useful resource or two in your browsing.
Less old-fashioned (but still probably not very useful), check out the Ada Clearinghouse: http://www.adaic.org/
Frankly, I'm not aware of any significant "Ada community". I was surprised to see that Ada is still in the "top 20" programming languages on the TIOBE index:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
It's very easy to explain NoSQL from high level view - it is basically "key-value" storage. Of course with thousand minor and important things, but in general it's just key value storage.
What's the best way to explain Hadoop and Map/Reduce?
May be some "real world" example which can be easy to give an compare for even newbies? Thanks!
I recently found this great article describing Map Reduce :
I’ve been planning on writing about
the Google’s MapReduce algorithm for
some time but I couldn’t find a good
practical example. Then we had a
Northwest C++ Users Group presentation
by Steve Yegge and a followup
discussion and beers, and I had a
little epiphany. Steve was talking
about, among other things, the build
process. And that’s just a bunch of
algorithms that are perfect for
explaining MapReduce.
The code examples are in C++, but the content is really language agnostic.
Here's a great tutorial on map/reduce in general, explaining the background, basics and data flow. I'm finding it useful to explain Google's App Engine implementation as well.
http://developer.yahoo.com/hadoop/tutorial/module4.html
I'm wondering building a website like StackOverFlow (approximately the same features using ASP.NET ) How much Work-power and time does it take in your opinion .
My boss has asked me to estimate for work-power , time , cost and suitable technologies .
I appreciate any direction .
I believe that the site would take plenty of time to implement. If I'd have to pull a guess of thin air I'd say somewhere between 800-1200 man hours.
Then comes the setting up servers, ensuring scalability, testing, fine-tuning algorithms.
So depending on how good you or your team is it could take anywhere up to a year to write something like this.
Disclaimer: I am just talking based on 10 years of experience with web-development. But I could be COMPLETELY wrong.
Buddy, there is a website similar to this called http://startups.com
You can probably ask this question there. Its specifically designed to answer questions like this. Whereas stackoverflow is intended for programmers and programming related questions. I see this question being asked here a bit isolated.
People come to this site and think wow stackoverflow this is an easy site to create.
I mean all it is is post a question then people submit an answer. I think that is a big misconception. Maybe just maybe the database is quite simple, a question has multiple answers and an answer has multiple comments associate with it. If you dig deep into it the questions and answers could actually be stored in the same table...with some indicator as to whether it is a question or an answer. But to answer your question, I don't think it is as simple as one might think. It's definitely not difficult in the logical sense (it's doable). What I am saying is it is more then a one week job :).
it is not that hard to do the site. the design is nice but simple. the engine isint THAT complicated (or so it looks). biggest problem is the load that falls on this site and the hard task of moderating/maintaining it. and the best part of it is the idea ;)
I think that the diffuclt of stackoverflow is to get community (very good quality community, not like yahoo answers).
Not only that, also use cases from stack overflow are pretty cool and adapt very well to get a good community.
About work-power a good skilled programmer could start it, if at full time like a month or less could do it. BUT! the programmer should have the idea,not a freelance or something like that, freelance or slave monkey coder could take a more time to do it.
But there are more problems, like money to invest at very begin of the app for example in hosting / server power costs.
Also stack overflow, could be compared to forums...its like a forum evoled or something similar.
Someone said that requires a lot of work power, I disagree if you start something to get the best scability,etcs (like project of big scale) you are going to death of that project.
Start something simple, very simple when there are scability problems start with that but no at begin!
Probably longer than you expect:
Code: It's Trivial (by Jeff Atwood)
Let's say I've come up with what I think is a clean and elegant solution to a common generic requirement in coding projects. I'm happy to share my code but my main motivation for publishing it would be to get feedback from a quality audience about my solution and to determine if it has been done better elsewhere, if it could be done better, if it is buggy, etc. The normal sorts of reasons a programmer would want feedback for.
The Code Project - ugly forum/comment interface and a serious pain when you want to update the article after it has been categorised. Can also be horribly slow at times.
CodePlex - not really a general code community; people would have to know what they're looking for in advance to find my code.
It would be fantastic if something like a simplified version of The Code Project were produced by the Stack Overflow team with a view to allow users to show off pieces of code and get feedback, thus leading to general skills improvement of everyone participating. A bit like Scott Hanselman's Weekly Source Code blog posts, but with more of a communal purpose. In the mean time, however, what do you suggest?
It would be fantastic if something like a simplified version of The Code Project were produced by the Stack Overflow team with a view to allow users to show off pieces of code and get feedback, thus leading to general skills improvement of everyone participating.
There's now a sister Q&A website exactly for this purpose — Code Review.
You could post your solutions here, as an answer to a question describing the problem that it proposes to solve.
You're likely to get at least a little feedback, and see other edits/version of a similar solution.
I need to be able to contribute to a relatively large Adobe AIR project and I'm starting from scratch with this technology. What's the best way to go about it?
I usually get a good book/tutorial and work my way through it but this time it seems there's just too much to learn for this to be feasible within a reasonable time frame. I would need books on Actionscript, FLEX, etc...
Do you know of any good resources that might be useful for this particular case?
How would you go about it if you were in my shoes?
I just had to do something similar. If you can afford it (or, get your company to pay for it), try doing a training class. I did one by Figleaf software a couple months ago and it really helped.
As for books, I hear the Essential Actionscript 3 book is good (I have the one for AS2 and it's quite good). Flex is really just the SDK. You'll be doing most of your work in AS3 and MXML.
Another really good thing to do is download the SDK and start playing with it. Think of a couple small apps to do, then write them in Flex. I did this at work (wrote a couple util Apps in Flex to learn it). I find the best way to learn is to do it, and the SDK is free so there shouldn't be anything stopping you.
Hello World for AIR, then progressively add detail.
Aggressively use any communities out there.
Blog about your experience. One day you will help someone else.
Today you are learning, tomorrow you are teaching.
I download samples from the Internet, and run them, mess with them, try to change them and understand how they work.
I subscribe to blogs on the topic and do samples, try to understan the stuff people write about.
And I do samples :)
So I basically learn from the top - down. First I get the general sense of the technology, and then I drill down with the samples to the parts that I find interesting. Works pretty well. :)
I usually find online tutorials are the best way to go. They are more to the point than books, so it's usually quicker to get up to speed. And don't limit yourself to a single resource. I've never had problems finding enough tutorials through our friend google.
I have no knowledge about Adobe AIR though. I assume your customer knows you're a noob too? ;D
I'm a big advocate of active learning, which is described in detail, here. Essentially, when you are trying to learn a new technology: read about it, discuss it with your peers, teach it to people who are even newer to the technology, and most importantly, get your hands dirty.
A perfect example of how you can learn new things is by getting involved with a community such as stackoverflow, or a discussion forum based around what you would like to learn (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/), or even by contributing to an open-source project.
Of course, none of the above is as effective as trying new things out. In order to learn new technologies (in my honest opinon), it is best to dive in "head-first" and try things out.