I don't program, but my brother is a professional programmer and has a BS from a top 30 CS program. He's taking a MIT course on Python through their Open Courseware program, and really likes it. The course features tutorials, lectures, and interactive problems. I don't know much about it, but it's worth checking out.

Edit: I should mention that the course he's taking is quite challenging. For an inexperienced programmer, MIT estimates that 20+ hours per week are needed to pass the class. My brother usually spends 4-8 hours per week (he has one year of programming experience at a small startup, mostly in Ruby and C++ if my memory serves me well).

tashippy Wrote:@sholum how do you study shakuhachi? You have a teacher?

I've only looked at online resources so far. Considering I still can't get a proper sound out of the lowest note though, I may need to start looking for a teacher.

As simple of an instrument as it is, it takes quite a bit of practice to even make a sound, especially since I've never played any wind instruments before. It's interesting though, and a practice instrument is pretty cheap to either buy or make (you can make one from PVC, though it doesn't sound quite as good as bamboo) so it doesn't have the horrendous start up costs of most traditional western instruments (even a low quality violin is in the hundreds, as are the cheapest of keyboards).

Bokusenou Wrote:@Haych
You might want to start out with going through the tutorials at http://www.codecademy.com. They are very interactive, and they have you building projects soon after starting out.

This actually looks pretty good for where I'm at right now. It's got a flashy user interface at least. We'll see how long that keeps me entertained for.


@vileru
I had no idea about that MIT opencourseware thing, thanks for showing me that. It looks like an amazing resource, just in general. To be honest, the course resources were pretty much where I learned like 90% of what I learned in undergrad. I hated sitting in lectures, and usually felt like I didn't get much out of it.. And then here there's this courseware thing where you can get all that benefit without even paying. They've even got graduate-level stuff up there too... crazy..

here's a url for others who want to take a look:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/find-by-topic/#

Quote:Every time you encounter a problem, be aware of it. Ask yourself, "Could a computer solve this problem?" (Hint: The answer is almost always 'yes')

That depends on what kind of problems you normally encounter!

sholum Wrote:it doesn't have the horrendous start up costs of most traditional western instruments (even a low quality violin is in the hundreds, as are the cheapest of keyboards).

Good point, that; them metal flutes are 'spensive.

Haych Wrote:I had no idea about that MIT opencourseware thing, thanks for showing me that. It looks like an amazing resource, just in general. [...] And then here there's this courseware thing where you can get all that benefit without even paying.

Stanford also has a ton of courses up and their iOS courses tend to be better than the MIT ones for obvious reasons. As far as the "benefit without paying" goes; you lose out on the real benefit of these schools which is the connections you make by attending and graduating them. (I'm a bit bitter that I blew off my chance to go there when I was younger ...)

shadysaint Wrote:That depends on what kind of problems you normally encounter!

I never said the solution was easily attainable, just that computers could conceivably solve most problems. If you humans can do it, then a computer can do it, but it may eventually require that we build computers that can act and think like humans do.

TheViking Wrote:Bottomline, school/work sucks

FTFY

vix86 Wrote:Like many others here. I'm forever learning programming, but I've completely stopped doing any sort of Japanese learning (no anki reviews, etc.). Employable skills seem more valuable.

You mean money is more valuable? That's what the employable skills are for.
Or technically, what money can buy is more valuable (you can't eat money or have sex with it).

Or you already have a large bank account that gives you a livable passive income which means that you can focus on employable skills to get the job you want rather than the job you need.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:You mean money is more valuable? That's what the employable skills are for.
Or technically, what money can buy is more valuable (you can't eat money or have sex with it).

Or you already have a large bank account that gives you a livable passive income which means that you can focus on employable skills to get the job you want rather than the job you need.

I'm not even sure what you are going on about. I was simply stating that I'm learning more about programming stuff than Japanese, because in the long run being a better programmer will likely provide more return on investment than simply being able to speak Japanese.

qwertyytrewq Wrote:You mean money is more valuable?

Translators and interpreters generally do not make more than non-Japanese speaking programmers do, thus the skill of programming is more valuable monetarily than the skill of speaking Japanese even if you are working in Japan. Basic Japanese skill might qualify you for more jobs in total, but there are high paid jobs for both English fluent and Japanese fluent programmers.

Your primary skill set is almost always more important than your Japanese skill set.

Being able to do both provides great return on investment. (╹◡╹)

I am currently studying chess. One thing I learnt is to take advice from people who are extremely competent and not from amateurs or simply qualified people.

One thing that changed my life is studying translation under a senior translator, and a big mistake I made was thinking that bachelor's degree = expert.

dizmox Wrote:Being able to do both provides great return on investment. (╹◡╹)

True, but unfortunately for all of us the number of hours in the day are somewhat limited.

Finished couch to 5k after about 5 runs, yay

The first 10-15 minutes always feels so uncomfortable, with it getting easier towards the end for some reason...

I've taught myself guitar for about twelve years, so quite a bit longer than I've been doing Japanese (seven-ish?). I've taken a few lessons here and there, but never very long term and I've learned almost everything on my own.

To be honest, I think it's a lot harder than Japanese if you're not naturally musically inclined. I've only really gotten a good feel for music in the last couple of years, and there are still some things that are supposed to be pretty basic that I'm not great at.

These days I play guitar a lot more than I study Japanese. I study Japanese just a few hours a week, and guitar at least an hour a day, perhaps two. But sometimes it's the opposite and I do that with Japanese.

I also exercise a lot recently, and work is busier, so I have very little laziness time. Which is sad because I love being lazy.

Yes, it's hard to juggle all things I want to learn, as I self-learn two other things alongside Japanese, but it's fun. At some point I figured out that I need to give up on something or at least greatly diminish its share to see some satisfying progress in the other two.

@Tzadeck What music do you like to play on the guitar?

undead_saif Wrote:@Tzadeck What music do you like to play on the guitar?

On acoustic I do finger picking stuff--I like messing around with folk songs with good lyrics (Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jackson Browne, stuff like that) and trying to make my own bass lines or little melody bits for solo guitar. I also do a little finger picking blues stuff (like Mississippi John Hurt kinda stuff).

Originally I played mostly classic rock on electric. But these days I do a lot of blues or older bluesy rock.

And on both I will just learn random songs that I like in any genre. I have friends who play various instruments, but no real band. Some of us have performed a few times in Kyoto though--some famous songs and a few originals.

Tzadeck Wrote:On acoustic I do finger picking stuff--I like messing around with folk songs with good lyrics (Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Jackson Browne, stuff like that) and trying to make my own bass lines or little melody bits for solo guitar. I also do a little finger picking blues stuff (like Mississippi John Hurt kinda stuff).

Originally I played mostly classic rock on electric. But these days I do a lot of blues or older bluesy rock.

And on both I will just learn random songs that I like in any genre. I have friends who play various instruments, but no real band. Some of us have performed a few times in Kyoto though--some famous songs and a few originals.

Cool!

I've been jumping on the JavaScript bandwagon recently. It's a much more fun and flexible language than I thought when you avoid the abundance of unfortunate features. It's kind of a given if you do web development, but the likes of Node.js and the abundance of other new libraries are making it more exciting recently.

These are some sites I recommend for learning things. The first four offer university level courses. I enjoyed Stanford's Startup Engineering (Coursera) and Berkeley's SaaS course (edX) as far as programming courses go.

https://www.udacity.com/
https://www.edx.org/
https://www.coursera.org/
https://novoed.com/ (Startup/business focus)

https://www.khanacademy.org/
http://dotinstall.com/ (already mentioned)

Javizy Wrote:I've been jumping on the JavaScript bandwagon recently.

Definitely check out some of the cross-platform mobile application libraries based on JavaScript and HTML/CSS. There's some fun stuff in that space as well.

Javizy Wrote:[...]It's a much more fun and flexible language than I thought when you avoid the abundance of unfortunate features.

Fur the fun value nothing beats C++ (and reading "The C++ Programming Language"). It's kind of like with reading "The Name of the Rose" where you start enjoying the text after you are done with the first hundred or so pages.

Trying to become proficient at machine learning, so I signed up to Kaggle with a friend and going through bits and pieces of "Machine Learning: A probabilistic approach" written by that guy who works at Google. Last time I tried I didn't get very far since I was stuck in my theoretical math habits and didn't really do any problem solving, just reading the book, so I didn't get much out of it.

I have a graduate level probability background with some statistical overlap, but I have no clue how to attack a lot of these high dimensional problems. Hoping to get to a decent level of ML problem solving skill in 9 months (I know I know, not long, but all I have free), so does anyone have any tips?

[s0apgun]

I've been considering learning a programming language for a while now as I haven't really been happy with being an engineer. I don't want to go back to school for a CS degree, so do you think it would be practical to become skilled at a programming language this late in the game? Otherwise, I'll probably spend some time teaching English in Japan for a while but it would be nice to have a job where I can use Japanese.

Learning programming should be an order of magnitude more straightforward than learning engineering.. you can become skilled in a single language in a few months if you really try - you don't need a CS degree to be a programmer. Though I think you'd need learn a range of different languages and technologies and build up some experience to have much chance of being hired (as far as I know the exception to this is fresh graduate hiring).

Learning new programming languages becomes much easier once you've learned one (or so I've heard). The idea is that, since you already know how something is done in one language, it's easier to understand it when you're learning another, thus expediting the learning process. That's why I'd learn something more straightforward yet still popular, like Python or JavaScript. C and its derivatives are important to learn if you want to work on software, but they're extremely convoluted in some areas.

Having an engineering background as well as programming experience will be a valuable asset if/when you decide to change professions.
Out of curiosity, as I'm an engineering student myself, what do you not like about the field? If you don't want to answer, that's fine too.