Yeah, I’m Dutch :)
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjqf5F7PPGw]
Blog Posts
All my blog posts and articles
April 2013
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2013-04-30
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2013-04-30
Debunking the conventional wisdom
What do you think, are younger people better programmers? Are they more productive, more clever, work longer hours? Or do older people have some advantages? Here’s a bit of research that says they do!
There is a perception in some tech circles that older programmers aren’t able to keep pace with rapidly changing technology, and that they are discriminated against in the software field. But a new study from North Carolina State University indicates that the knowledge and skills of programmers actually improve over time – and that older programmers know as much (or more) than their younger peers when it comes to recent software platforms.
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2013-04-23
The number of pages in a congressional bill
I have to do a little research. It seems to be a favorite talking point by politicians on all sides of a debate to criticize or dismiss a piece of legislation based on the number of pages it has. It’s an odd bit of criticism: how long is too long, how long is too short, doesn’t it depend on how many laws the bills are enacting? doesn’t it depend on the number of amendments? Watch this space. I am going to find some answers. If you know some of the data, please post a response or send me an email!
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2013-04-22
Ongoing coverage of MOOCs: How good are they really?
Read more →This trend is now unstoppable – massive open online courses – or MOOCs – are constantly in the news. The angle often seems to be about whether or how or how much they will impact higher education and education in general. It’s a topic I am very interested in.
Professors: B+ Convenience: A Teacher to student interaction: D Student to student interaction:...
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2013-04-21
A fascinating story of Curt Shilling’s game company’s demise
Read more →This is from the New York Time’s article about Curt Shilling’s ill fated game company “38 Studios”:
“It just felt really good, when this all started, to have the sexy sports celebrity from Boston who seemed to like Rhode Island and showed up in Rhode Island, and who built this exotic new business, even though no one knew what it was,” says the historian Ted Widmer, who grew up in Providence and works at Brown. “It seemed like the digital economy, or biotech, or whatever. But then it turned out that it wasn’t the new digital economy. It was some 13-year-old’s medieval fanta...
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2013-04-18
88% of spreadsheets have errors — Still!
Read more →A long long time ago there was a product called Lotus Improv. Our premise was that complex spreadsheets were very difficult to maintain, to audit and to modify. So much so that we had heard stories about companies fearing making any change to the spreadsheets they run their business on.
Maybe the person who created the monster was no longer with the company or maybe the spreadsheet was so complicated (and untestable) that the benefits of making a change did not outweigh the risk of introducing an error. That was around 1987.
Here we are 25 years later and shockingly the situation seems to still be tolerated. From an article in MarketWatch:
“Suc...
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2013-04-13
What do you learn in college?
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As you know the topic of the future of the university, the role of MOOCs, and online learning, is highly topical these days. I happen to be interested in it too so I refer you to this David Brooks Article, called, The Practical University. It’s an interesting angle.
However I want to pull a single quote out of that:
“Think about Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book, “Lean In.” Put aside the debate about the challenges facing women in society. Focus on the tasks she describes as being important for anybody who wan...
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2013-04-12
Great tips for dealing with email
This is a tired topic but this article from the New York Times does have some good tips on managing your avalanche of email …
“…There’s no quick fix. But set aside a few hours one afternoon, brew a pot of coffee, get a tasty snack, put on your favorite playlist and roll up your sleeves. It’s time to tame your in-box…” (from “How to Lighten the Crush of Email“)
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2013-04-09
Theatre: Ryan Landry’s “M”
Read more →We saw “Ryan Landry’s “M”” at the Calderwood Pavilion in the South End last weekend. I started out a bit suspiciously when the playwright (who’s not famous) name is part of the name of the play being promoted. The play is based on a famous film “M”. Here’s a bit from an interview:
When asked, “A German film from 1931 about a child killer … what made you want to turn this into a play?” Landry says: “Because it is a beautiful masterwork. A goal to which other artists should aspire. I chose this film because I wanted to write a play based on the most unfunny thing in the world and still make it [the play] funny. It is a sad play too. It is a human play” (from...
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2013-04-08
We’re not going back to the moon
Read more →This is kind of depressing, but I don’t know why – but NASA administrator Bolden says that NASA has no plans to lead another mission to the moon within our lifetime:
“However, he made it clear NASA has no plans to lead its own human return to the Moon under his watch. “NASA will not take the lead on a human lunar mission,” he said. “NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime. And the reason is, we can only do so many things.” Instead, he said the focus would remain on human missions to asteroids and to Mars. “We intend to do that, and we think it can be done.” (from ...
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2013-04-06
Control the Sun, really
As you know, I am teaching a course at Olin College this spring – alas we are coming to the end. Anyway an important component has been a Lean Startup project, where students take invent a product and take it through a complete Lean Startup validation. Among many things that students do is to ‘go outside the building’ to validate their businesses.
Do me a great favor and help a team of students validate their idea,“Sunrise Blinds”, and answer this super easy questionnaire!
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2013-04-02
Give more to receive more
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Here’s a really interesting article: “Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead”?from the New York Times. It’s about a Wharton Professor that sounds just too good to be true:
“For Grant, helping is not the enemy of productivity, a time-sapping diversion from the actual work at hand; it is the mother lode, the motivator that spurs increased productivity and creativity. In some sense, he has built a career in professional motivation by trying to unpack the puzzle of his own success. He has always helped; he has...
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2013-04-01
Friedman, mentioning Olin College: again about inventing your own job
Read more →Tom Friedman, quoting Tony Wagner, describes what he thinks should be taught today (that isn’t really being taught:)
““Today,” he said via e-mail, “because knowledge is available on every Internet-connected device, what you know matters far less than what you can do with what you know. The capacity to innovate — the ability to solve problems creatively or bring new possibilities to life — and skills like critical thinking, communication and collaboration are far more important than academic knowledge. As one executive told me, ‘We can teach new hires the content, and we will have to because it continues to change, but we can’t teach them how to think — to ask the right questions — and to ta...
March 2013
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2013-03-24
Olin College of Engineering
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I don’t know if I mentioned that I’m teaching Engineering Entrepreneurship at Olin. What a cool school! While the two course have existed at Olin, I was asked to re-invent them so to a great extent they are new.Here’s a blurb that appeared in the ...
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2013-03-23
Practice makes perfect?
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I am (after 10 years) a beginner pianist who wants to improve. I practice, but not diligently enough. On average I think I practice 5 days a week, for about 1/2 hour, so that’s less than 3 hours a week. Clearly I could do better. But I am proud of the effort I put in and I definitely have made a lot of progress. But I am at best still an advanced beginner.
From an article,“If you’re busy, you’re doing something wrong”,
“We can start by disproving the assumption that the elite players dedicate ...
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2013-03-22
Who sets the price for Über rides?
I’ve used the now-famous internetty car service Über a couple of times. The prices for the two rides I took were about 20-25% more expensive than taxis. Which made me wonder about how the prices are set for Über rides. Are they set in Silicon Valley by some all-knowing limousine wizard? Does it allow for competition, that is, can an enterprising Über-enabled driver choose to offer a lower price?
I worry because if Über actually becomes dominant they could through monopoly drive up the prices of black cars (which we used to call limousines, but that sounds too fancy I guess.) Could they in turn drive up the prices of regular taxi cabs?
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2013-03-16
Everyone should know how to program
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU1xS07N-FA&w=560&h=315]
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2013-03-06
Sage on the e-stage?
Read more →There are fascinating shifts going on in higher education today, from MOOCs to the ‘flipped classroom’. A lot of action. I think we are looking at another text-book “Innovator’s Dilemma” scenario playing out:
The established players (traditional universities), aware of a new way of delivering their offer, but seeing that it doesn’t meet the needs of their customer’s as well as the old way. And the upstarts (udemy and others), the disruptors, applying and refining the use of the technology in niche markets, eventually perfecting it to the point that they can blow by the laggards, and leave them in the dust. Textbook!
Check out today’s New York Times:
“Institutions of higher learning must m...
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2013-03-03
It’s very hard to know what’s true about government spending
Read more →I saw this in the Boston Globe this morning and I jotted it down because yet again a bit of totally counterintuitive and confusing info:
“It is not like we have Soviet tank divisions at the German border poised to launch a sneak attack,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, an independent research group in Alexandria, Va. “It is not a question of readiness. It is a question of readiness to do what? The defense budget is twice what it was before Sept. 11th and we have half as many enemies. A lot of this is theater. Let them sequester and they will see that nothing happens.” (from ...
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2013-03-02
LinkedIn invites are flooding in?!
I don’t know what’s going on, am I suddenly famous? LinkedIn invites are picking up. I think it’s more likely that LinkedIn has come up with a clever way to encourage people to link to others. I don’t know, but I am receiving LinkedIn invites, from people I never heard of before, and from other cities and even countries. Whatever, first I was feeling important, now I am starting to feel a little besieged!