Programming Languages Are the Most Powerful, and Least Usable and Learnable User Interfaces
Programming languages are amazing, but too hard to use and learn.
BLOG@CACM
Advertisement
Through A Google Glass, Darkly
I have been wearing Google Glass as both a technical assessment of utility and as a social study in human dynamics and expectations.
Grant Proposal Time and the Unexpected Benefits of CSTA Chapters
This piece explores the growing relationship between unversity computer science faculty and CSTA's regional chapters and highlights some unexpected mutual benefits.
Capturing and Structuring Data Mined from the Web
Kate Matsudaira considers not only how to mine data from the Web, but what to do with it once you have it.
Reflections on Using AppInventor to Teach First-Year Programming
This post reflects on my experiences of using AppInventor to teach Android development to first-year university computer science students.
Media Coverage of Analysis of AP CS 2013 Exam Results
Barbara Ericson does an annual analysis of AP CS exam results. Her 2013 analysis attracted significant media attention.
We May Be 100 Years Behind in Making Computing Education Accessible to All
So when should we be able to provide computing education to everyone in the US? Using physics and mathematics as examples, we may be 100 years behind.
Deferred Maintenance on the Future
Over-worked and sleep-deprived drivers are steering many of our vehicles of discovery on balding tires across potholed roads. Stripping away the metaphor, we are struggling to sustain appropriate investments in basic research infrastructure and facilities operations, and our dispirited researchers face ever-diminishing odds of research funding as they work to keep laboratories operational and students and post-doctoral research associates funded.
MOOCs Need More Work; So Do CS Graduates
Mark Guzdial assesses the first full year of massive open online courses, while Joel C. Adams considers the employment outlook for CS grads.
The "Hour of Code" was a hit, with over 15 million people trying out programming.
Hour of Code: Observations from a Middle School Classroom
I volunteered at a middle school for the Hour of Code and helped students learn basic programming. Here are some observations that are relevant to CS education.
The Lure of Live Coding; The Attraction of Small Data
Mark Guzdial ponders a new set of research questions, while Valerie Barr considers the utility of one person's data.
Spanning the Chasm of the K–12 and Post-Secondary Relationship
This article describes the sometimes fraught relationship between K–12 computer science teachers and university computer science faculty. It decribes how CSTA has navigated this divide and attempted to bring hamony to this often troubled union.
From humble beginnings 26 years ago to today, the annual SC conference has shaped our community and our technologies.
Big Data Analyzed By Big Compute, Big Compute Creates Big Data
The science and engineering communities have worked together through several 1,000x leaps in computing capability, each time managing to push the boundaries of the application of these technologies to the problems faced by our society. Last night I had a clear view that the transition from pan-petaFLOPS to exascale computing is interesting because it is both accelerating a move into the big data era, and being shaped by the arrival of big data from other disciplines well outside the traditional supercomputing community. If we are thoughtful as we proceed into this new era, we have a unique opportunity to create something much more effective, relevant, and useful than we ever have before.
A Summit on Computing Education in South Carolina
A summit of legislators, business leaders, officials from the Department of Education, and teachers convenes in South Carolina to advance computing education in the state.
Building a Computationally-Literate Workforce
Students must leave their formal training ready to take up the state of the practice in fields that routinely use computational tools, and ready to advance the state of the practice in fields that have been slower to adopt. While the academic community works through internal processes to adapt to the changing needs of their students, the computational knowledge gap is filled by employees and technical conferences.
Building the HPC Community, Shaping Early Careers
The SC conference series provides a valuable opportunity each year to shape early research careers in an event where the whole community meets to exchange news, build collaborations, define research directions, and learn about technology.
For These Companies, It All Started With the Decision to Adopt
SC13 is featuring sixteen companies on the exhibit floor that have adopted HPC as part of their core business and, as a result, have transformed their ability to compete and succeed. From NASCAR to diapers, the HPC Impact Showcase is designed to provide inspiration and role models for organizations that think advanced computing is not relevant to what they do, or that it is out of their reach.
This Saturday the world's largest, and most influential, conference on high performance computing opens in Denver. Over the next week new advances in supercomputing research will be presented, new products will be announced, and important relationships will be kindled or renewed. And, yes, all of this really does matter to you: the impact of high performance computing is felt everywhere throughout our culture, in big ways and small, and impacts each of us every day.
Computing Does Not Support Its Infrastructure
All large, multinational companies that depend on their intellectual prowess are able to avoid most taxation. Two factors enable the trend: first intellectual property (IP) as product designs and software are hard to value in financial terms; second, the creators of software IP do not care about what businesses do with their products — they just as soon give them away — as long as they get paid. The infrastructure components that supported their education, the underlying research, and the communication facilities are to be supported by others. Transitioning to a fair balance requires more than patches to fix loopholes.
ACM Multimedia 2013 – Best Papers and the Revision Process
This year ACM Multimedia had a new revision process that may be of interest for other ACM conferences. Let's review it and see also the best papers selection.
Considering Privacy Issues in the Context of Google Glass
Jason Hong ponders why there has been so much negative press coverage of Google Glass with regard to privacy, considering the issue from two different perspectives.
Shape the Future of Computing
ACM encourages its members to take a direct hand in shaping the future of the association. There are more ways than ever to get involved.
Get InvolvedCommunications of the ACM (CACM) is now a fully Open Access publication.
By opening CACM to the world, we hope to increase engagement among the broader computer science community and encourage non-members to discover the rich resources ACM has to offer.
Learn More