Curt's Place
Curt is a Full Professor in the VCSU Math Department. He has been here
since 1995. His main job here is to teach the Computer Science
classes, an occasional Math class, keep the Association to proper parliamentary procedure and in
general be a gadfly. He usually has the coolest
web site at VCSU. Why doesn't this page look like most other faculty pages?
For the faint of heart and faint of computer a non-Java page.
Curt's schedule
Quotes and other items of interest:
- Math primers for programmers.
- Immersive game playing teaches programming.
- Is the iPad the Dynabook? Alan Kay says no, not even close.
- The video that is causing the buzz, was produced and housed at Code.org.
- 10 enemies of being a good programmer.
- The evolution of concurrency in Windows.
- Software is Mathematics.
- Natural languages and computer languages.
- Girls who code.
- The success of programming languages is due to the beard.
- Grace Hopper explains a nanosecond. If this link has changed just search YouTube for Grace Hopper. Grace's most famous quote is: "If it is a good idea.. go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologize than it is to get permission."
- Put your programming skills to the test.
- Classic:Computer Programming is an art by Don Knuth (1972). He has not changed the title of his books, so he must still agree to this.
- Becoming a pale, pasty programmer.
- Why Darth Vader was an amazing project manager.
- I hate my smart phone or computer geeks are not everyone else.
- An interview with Donald Knuth. Dr. Knuth is on everyone's list of the top ten Computer Scientists. Despite that the interview is accessible and interesting.
- An Abstraction at the Core of Computer Science, by Alfred Thompson.
- Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. Edsger Dijkstra, Turing award winner for 1972.
- Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer. Art is everything else we do. Donald Knuth, Turing award winner for 1974.
- It's incredibly exciting, to be thinking about a problem and suddenly see a way to solve it that you hadn't thought of before, and that makes a lot of other problems go away. Barbar Liskov, Turing award winner for 2008.
- The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. Albert Einstein
- Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein.
- That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate is lousy programmers. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in "Oath of Fealty"
- Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein.
- You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. Yogi Berra.
- Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy. Albert Einstein.
- The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. Albert Einstein.
- ... the colleges pretending that learning BASIC suffices or at least helps, whereas the teaching of
BASIC should be rated as a criminal offense: it multilates the mind beyond recovery. Edsger Dijkstra.
Last time I remembered to update this date: May 10, 2013, though the rest of the site is updated much more often, especially the class pages.
By Curt Hill
Send Comments and Suggestions to Curt Hill (Curt.Hill@vcsu.edu).