[Edu-sig] more about a classic code school spiral...

kirby urner kirby.urner at gmail.com
Fri Apr 29 17:22:55 EDT 2016


On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 12:20 PM, kirby urner <kirby.urner at gmail.com> wrote:

<< SNIP >>


> Here's one of my recent BI-like findings, using my own neural
> net (the one between my ears):  code schools are in need of
> on-the-shelf prototypes that students might hack on, both alone
> and together, and a logical application every code school needs
> is (drum role):
>

(drum roll):  <--- oops

The curriculum I'm envisioning (for some schools to adopt) looks like this:

X --> JavaScript (good parts)
--> Front End (static HTML / CSS, then DOM animation)
--> dive into alien LISPish language, in parallel with...
--> dive into Python
--> back to JavaScript (and so on, in a spiral)
--> X

By LISPish language I mean such as:  Clojure, Pyret, Racket, Scala...
feel free to add.

Where does J fit in?  Definitely J, like APL before it, shares the paradigm
of a "pipeline of transformations" and that's what this segment will show
off:  concurrent / parallel throughput as we work through examples of
machine learning.

Pyret has image objects self representing right in the REPL, making the
concepts come easily.  Apply image filtering interactively.  I like that
theme of "Where's Waldo"

https://youtu.be/U89BmApmnE8?t=1870  # <-- that's 31 minutes, 10 seconds

I'm not saying Python can't do a deep learning learning pipeline, it can
and does, but we're purposely going from JavaScript to LISPish because
we want our spiral to branch off in all directions, future career-wise.

If you end up doing Java or C#, you'll have your Python to build on.

If you're pulled towards Clojure, your code school will have prepared
you.

Starting and ending with JavaScript is just another way of saying
"to be continued" i.e. on the next iteration through JavaScript we might
look at ES7 or one of the transpiler variants (TypeScript).  Lots to learn!

Kirby
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