Welcome to WiseBison.com. This web site will be the home of my CCSF and CSM Ruby, Python, and HTML5 courses. The courses will cover the content of in my college classes, with the same reading, coding assignments, and quizzes. The courses will all be self-administered and self-paced. I will eventually create some short-term instructor-led (by me) courses around these topics. The first courses will become available June 1, 2012.
This will also be my blog, replacing my HackingtheValley.com blog. Check back now and then to see what’s going on, or sign up for the RSS feed to stay up to date.
Keep hacking…
Here’s a little something I give to my online Ruby and Python
students every year.
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When I’m not hacking on Javascript and PHP at Yourversion.com, I teach PHP and Ruby courses at CCSF and CSM. And next summer I’ll have a Python course at CSM (edited: jan 15, 2012 — and it was a great course). Up to now, these courses have been F2F—face to face. But now there’s trouble in River City.
Enrollment for F2F courses has been on the decline since the DotCom Bubble ruptured. Now consider this fact: enrollment jumps 50 to 100% when we put a course online. This means that we’re gonna put lots of courses on line—as many as courses as we can, as fast as we can.
Not everyone is happy with this. There are some teachers who despise online courses. The Luddites are yelling, The sky is falling! Online courses can’t be monitored. Online courese are an invitation to cheating! Robots will take our jobs!
The Luddites are probably right: the sky is falling. And the robots are coming. It’s inevitable that many teachers will be replaced by software that will be indistinguishable from a human teacher, online, at least. A friend who works at Adultfriendfinder.com tells me they already have bots that can convince eager young fellows that they’re talking to a really hot and willing girl. It wouldn’t take much more to create a bot that does a pretty good impression of an online Computer Science teacher.
Then again, it won’t matter, really. After all, the glaciers are going to be passing over this neighborhood in 50,000 years or so. As far as I know, there are no schools—or people—under 2,000 feet of ice. I know this to be true, because I read it online, on the Discovery Channel web site.
I worked Saturday. As usual I took the train down and back. Most of the time the ride gives me a few moments to day dream, think the unexpected thoughts, and read the news on my iPhone. Thanks, Steve. Nice job. Too bad the Version 2 update slowed everything to a crawl.
On the way back the platform was nearly empty…only a few Stanford students heading back toward the City. But the train was packed with high school twerps. I looked into the next car and saw that the inmates of Bedlam had been released into the world, so I sat among the Dopers.
Every school has Dopers who impress each other with how much they can drink, smoke, and steal. They were having fun trying to avoid paying the toll. The harried conductor made a desultory attempt to check their tickets, but gave it up as a waste of time. He shook his head and passed through to check the tickets of the adults on the car. During the week I’ve seen conductors take keen pleasure in publicly humiliating business travelers who have an expired ticket, pulling them aside, calling railway security, issuing a $250 citations, then kicking them off the train. But Saturday the Lovefesters, too persistent and to0 painful to deal with, rode for free.
Conversation in front of me:
–Dude, I’m on probation. If if smoke up today at the Lovefest, will it show on my drug test next week?
–Fuck if I know. Look what I got here. (He pulls out a strip of blotter paper.) I’m gonna cut this Dude. Everyone gets to see the lights tonight! Hey, assholes! Who wants a square? Drop a square or be square.
–Fuck you, Dude! That’s awesome. Have some! (sweet-looking girl passes a bottle of whiskey to cool Acid Dude.)
–Man, you gonna do that now? On the train? says red-faced drunken twerp.
–Fuck yes. Right here. In plain sight. Why the fuck not?
–Ohh! Man, your shit don’t stink…(Lots of laughter from twerps. Old people on train look alarmed, shocked, and outraged.)
–Man, you need a knife to cut that blotter? (Red-faced twerp pulls out wicked looking commando knife and hands it to felon twerp.)
–Dude, if I handle this blotter, will Acid show up on the drug test??? Studid question, I know…
–You are stupid, you dumb fuck…
–Aw, fuck. Fuck those asshole PAs. They’re fuckers and I’m just having some fun doing my thing…
–Getting ready for the Lovefest! Arrggh!
This is nothing like the 60′s. The reason for getting high was a concern about Mother Earth, Politics, The War, Fighting the Man, Raising Consciousness…that’s what wss all about. Now it’s Lovefest, Dude. It’s all about paaartying and selling booze. Thank you Booze Companies for providing the Lovefest Generation with some faux Good Old Days.