how to build programming logic?

[MarkMLl]

The peak of pollution was just after WW2 and in the 1950s. Since then everything from the rivers and oceans to the air in cities (and globally) has become far *less* polluted. Except in places where the government is in charge of everything, such as the Soviet Union and today's China.

And the reason that pollution in the West has reduced is that all of the production has moved to China.

MarkMLl

[brucehoult]

The peak of pollution was just after WW2 and in the 1950s. Since then everything from the rivers and oceans to the air in cities (and globally) has become far *less* polluted. Except in places where the government is in charge of everything, such as the Soviet Union and today's China.

And the reason that pollution in the West has reduced is that all of the production has moved to China.

That's a very recent change and largely just a neutral shuffling around so some people can claim ridiculously high reduction numbers in their back yeard. Global pollution has been steadily, unexcitingly, reducing for 60+ years.

[Siwastaja]

I get your points, but many of them are definitely debatable.

Yeah, and many of the truly large changes are still recent, we can't see their effects yet.

Just 15 years ago people pretty much interacted with each other just like 50 or 100 years ago, or when alone, had moments of "nothing to do".

"Boomers" already sat in front of the TV for maybe 3-4 hours straight. Just like later generations sat in front of PC. Phone calls replaced writing letters, and emails and chat software on PCs replaced phone calls.

But being continuously, like literally 24/7, glued to a mobile personal entertainment device, and being completely emotionally absent even when physically together, is a really new phenomenon invented around 2010.

We don't have any data yet how it affects our future generations. We will know after another decade or two. I don't know, but there are certainly risks involved in such large and sudden behavior change.

[SiliconWizard]

We can already see some of the effects IMHO.

[brucehoult]

Just 15 years ago people pretty much interacted with each other just like 50 or 100 years ago, or when alone, had moments of "nothing to do".

Smartphones made a change, but many or most people has SMS for instant communication from around 1998. That's what Twitter was build around, at first.

I've been running the family@hoult.org mailing list with about 50 people on it since May 2000. (As a simple .forward file with no spam protection for the first few years but not now so don't even think about it :p )

I've been participating in international BBS's since 1986. I bought my first home computer (a Mac IIcx) in 1989 not because I couldn't afford one before then, but because the capability had improved and MOSTLY because cheap Chinese 2400 bps modems had just become available and a local BBS had started carrying email and usenet via uucp. A permanent link (and telnet and ftp and gopher etc) followed soon after.

I had my first online liaison in 1991. I was in Wellington NZ, she was in NYC. She came to NZ for the month of May 91 and we toured the North Island on my motorcycle and the South Island in my sister's car. I went to NY for a month at Christmas and NY. We're still in touch from time to time. Perhaps weirdly, she later dated RMS and he writes warmly about her on the front page of stallman.org

As Gibson said on NPR in 1993 "The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed".

The iPhone and Android brought in most of the population of the world -- and made things more convenient for the early adopters -- but some of us have been having (or initiating) many of our most important interactions online for 35 years already.

"Boomers" already sat in front of the TV for maybe 3-4 hours straight.

My parents did in the 1970s, from the 6 PM news until bed time at 10 or 11. So did my grandparents, in the time I knew them.

This wasn't entirely new -- TV just replaced radio, which had been evening entertainment for captive millions starting about 100 years ago.

I've never been in the habit of just sitting in front of TV watching whatever is served up. As a kid I knew when my show was on, watched it, then disappeared to my room to build something or read a book.

Now, yes, I spend that time and more in front of a computer. But I think it's different. I'm actively doing, creating, something. Or communicating with people, such as those here on eevblog, not just passively being broadcast at.

But being continuously, like literally 24/7, glued to a mobile personal entertainment device, and being completely emotionally absent even when physically together, is a really new phenomenon invented around 2010.

I don't understand and don't like people continually using their phones when they have a specific meeting with a friend or date. I try very hard not to do that. Even twenty years ago I ignored my mobile phone if it rang while I was with someone -- often much to their consternation ... "You HAVE TO answer a ringing phone". No I don't.

With smartphones sometimes a point comes up that someone wants to check a reference and I think that's fine if it's just occasional.

I'm not concerned about partners on a sofa at home each absorbed in their phones. You can't interact 100% of the time, and people have been snuggling up with their partners with each read a book for centuries.

There definitely are people focussing excessively on their phone when they are with other people. I suspect (and hope) this will self-correct over time.

[snarkysparky]

" Global pollution has been steadily, unexcitingly, reducing for 60+ years."


I would like to read more about that.  Is there a source you can supply?

[Nominal Animal]

I'm not brucehoult, but I have some links:

• https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution: Globally, death rates for air pollution (both indoor and outdoor air pollution) has dropped from around 110 per 100,000 persons in 1990 to 64 per 100,000 persons; essentially almost halving the death rate due to air pollution in just three decades.
• https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution-does-it-get-worse-before-it-gets-better: Global sulphur dioxide (SO₂) emissions peaked in 1980 at around 150 million tonnes per year; now, it is under 100 million tonnes per year.
• https://ourworldindata.org/sanitation: Share of deaths from unsafe sanitation has dropped from 3.5% globally in 1990 to under 1.5% in 2017.  Similarly, access to safely managed drinking water in the same interval rose from 62% to 74% of global population.

However, some types of emissions have not peaked yet.  The main one being carbon dioxide, of course:

• https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions: Global CO₂ emissions are at their peak, at about 35,000 million tonnes per year; compared to 22,000 million tonnes in 1990.

If we measure global pollution by the number of deaths it causes in the world, then we're making astonishing progress right now, and have done so for at least the last three decades.

[MarkMLl]

If we measure global pollution by the number of deaths it causes in the world, then we're making astonishing progress right now, and have done so for at least the last three decades.

/Reported/ number of deaths. I'm very sorry, but I do not believe that large chunks of the World are both able and willing to produce reliable figures.

MarkMLl

[brucehoult]

If we measure global pollution by the number of deaths it causes in the world, then we're making astonishing progress right now, and have done so for at least the last three decades.

/Reported/ number of deaths. I'm very sorry, but I do not believe that large chunks of the World are both able and willing to produce reliable figures.

A reasonable point, but I don't believe that is getting *worse* over time. Despite the current governments of China and to a lesser degree Russia.

I personally also have huge doubts about our supposed ability to know the average temperature of the surface of the Earth (or even single points) to 0.01 C or even 1 C a century ago. We do know daily maxima and minima to a pretty reliable 1 C/F for a few thousand quite strongly clustered locations a century ago (or maybe even 150 years) but it's not at all the same thing. It's been a different story since satellites went up, but that's only ~1980.

General note: on subjects that (regrettably) have a political component rather than being purely technical I'm willing to state my position, so that the undecided are aware such a position is held by otherwise-rational people, but I'm not willing to defend or debate it. There *is* no incontrovertible truth on such matters, you can never convince someone who strongly holds an opposing position. Only time will tell.

[Siwastaja]

I've been participating in international BBS's since 1986.

Yeah. I'm significantly younger, which also means I grew up with modern "connected" home computers, and participated in BBS's already as a small kid, tried to run one, too. Then the Internet become available for common households, replacing the BBS scene. Being connected and utilizing technology for entertainment comes completely naturally for me and some, but nearly not all of my age.

Even then, if some of our generation spent like 5 hours a day in front of the computer, this was generally considered a serious mental health risk. Parents were worried, media was worried.

"Information overload" was an actual term.

While spending maybe 2-3 hours per day with tech entertainment/connectivity was considered safe limit 20-30 years ago, now 16 hours is expected as normal.

Watching whole seasons of series on a regular basis, maybe overnight, was considered some sick extremist nerd act (normal people would watch series one episode a week). Now this is what everybody expects normal people to do. The change is huge, it's like two orders of magnitude!

This is a recent and large change, and some people like me, "tech addicts" since small kid, are not keeping up at all, I have become pretty much what was normal 20 years ago, yet now people count me as the strange one again. I don't even have a smartphone. I didn't change my behavior at all. I was too nerdy and tech addicted 20-25 years ago. Now I'm too little of that!

This being said, I agree that nearly not everyone are addicted enough to be glued 24/7 on their interrupt generators, not everybody have a problem. But alarmingly many are. Heck, even if just 1% are, this seems like a huge risk for the society. It likely will result in more neglected kids, and more broken communication than ever. Right now, here an entertainment service company is running radio advertisements where they pretty much describe how a parent addicted in their services neglects their kids by not providing them with food. They make it a "funny" joke. No one bats an eye because people think this is funny, as it is just normal. But maybe I'm just a party pooper and alarmist for no reason, I don't know. I still don't like that joke because I don't like the reality it describes.

[MarkMLl]

I personally also have huge doubts about our supposed ability to know the average temperature of the surface of the Earth (or even single points) to 0.01 C or even 1 C a century ago. We do know daily maxima and minima to a pretty reliable 1 C/F for a few thousand quite strongly clustered locations a century ago (or maybe even 150 years) but it's not at all the same thing. It's been a different story since satellites went up, but that's only ~1980.

Another reasonable point. But irrespective of potential gaps and discrepancies in the historical or geographical record, my experience tells me that the climate has changed over the last few decades, and at that point I am prepared to accept the figures (which are the mean of many localised studies and are to some extent smoothed over multiple years) that underlie the "hockey stick" model.

MarkMLl

[brucehoult]

I personally also have huge doubts about our supposed ability to know the average temperature of the surface of the Earth (or even single points) to 0.01 C or even 1 C a century ago. We do know daily maxima and minima to a pretty reliable 1 C/F for a few thousand quite strongly clustered locations a century ago (or maybe even 150 years) but it's not at all the same thing. It's been a different story since satellites went up, but that's only ~1980.

Another reasonable point. But irrespective of potential gaps and discrepancies in the historical or geographical record, my experience tells me that the climate has changed over the last few decades, and at that point I am prepared to accept the figures (which are the mean of many localised studies and are to some extent smoothed over multiple years) that underlie the "hockey stick" model.

MarkMLl

Oh, the hockey stick is just completely debunked. Once it was known what algorithm/code was used by Mann, it was shown that feeding any set of completely random data into his algorithm would produce a hockey stick.

Even just the idea of treating geological data (hugely smoothed and with large error bars) and daily observational data as a single time series is ludicrous.

I'm not quite (months) finished my 6th decade on this planet so don't have a lot of data compared to some, but I can't see any personally observed data that is anywhere near strong enough to reject the null hypothesis that the climate is not changing on a long term permanent basis. There are weather patterns covering several years or a decade, certainly, e.g. our current La Nina. But they reverse.

[Nominal Animal]

/Reported/ number of deaths. I'm very sorry, but I do not believe that large chunks of the World are both able and willing to produce reliable figures.

So, you believe that gut feeling is a better indicator than widely accepted approximate figures and statistics?   

Statistics are not perfect, nor usually too accurate.  But they're best tool we have for the job.

Your own experience is just one data point among many.  Valuing it over statistics is a typical human folly.

My own experience contains both statistically useful data points, as well as utterly unlikely coincidences that are rather odd and unbelievable.  I'm not sure which is which, which is why I try hard to point out when I base things on my own experience, my own opinion, corraborated statistics, or a personal idea or gut feeling; so that it can be debated whether the data point has merit or not.

As to the links, they're not from an overly optimistic source.  Quite the contrary, Our World in Data tries to highlight the problems.  The fact that they agree that human deaths due to pollution are in steep decline over the last three decades, is a meaningful data point in itself.

I also tried to show that not everything is good news.  Human fertility is also in steep decline in the developed countries, and we don't know exactly why.  There could be genetic damage due to environmental pollution we don't know yet.  So, the links I posted are just some data points, and not the whole truth by a mile.
It's just that personal beliefs and gut feelings and individual experiences have zero useful input on things at the planetary scale; we individual humans are too small and too short-lived for that.

[Siwastaja]

I think a simple example proves how flaky "personal experience" is:

We all experience the very same climate. Yet, if you ask about opinions, some will strongly claim that their own experiences show how climate has warmed "significantly" in just a few decades; no more cold and snowy winters like before. At the same time, others who experienced the exact same climate and weather conditions - i.e., someone else who lives close by to have 1:1 the same factual experience, says the opposite, how they personally can testify that climate has definitely not changed.

This is because both have an expected outcome for political/whatever reasons, causing confirmation bias, even if they tried their best to be honest. For example, two years ago we had exceptionally warm and snowless winter. But last winter again was really traditional cold winter with a lot of snow. It's matter of your personal bias which one you remember more strongly.

[MarkMLl]

Oh, the hockey stick is just completely debunked. Once it was known what algorithm/code was used by Mann, it was shown that feeding any set of completely random data into his algorithm would produce a hockey stick.

I do not believe that that has been established with any degree of confidence, i.e. that any paper attempting to debunk the "hockey stick curve" has passed peer review and been accepted by a major journal.

Subject to the usual subjectivity about the definition of "major journal" etc.

MarkMLl

[Siwastaja]

Oh but you don't need peer reviews and journals for that.

Just publish the data and let people replicate it. I.e., the classic cut the talk, show the proof.

Yes, I have published papers, yes, in journals. I was deeply shocked (but not surprised) to see the quality of the process. Peer reviewers are not necessarily up to task at all, and a lot of BS has passed through, and similarly, significant research can be blocked due to noninterest of journals, which are, after all, businesses that get their revenue by publishing suitable content.

So while I'm critical about brucehoult's claims, the part of not being in journals is uninteresting IMHO. I'd like to see the proof, then it's completely irrelevant what the social status of that proof is because I can make my own conclusions, being scientist enough (like many on this forum, for example).

[nctnico]

Does anybody use flowcharts anymore?

Kind of. I pretty much always do a state transition diagram for a state machine. Flow charts, not so much but if it makes a non-obvious thing simpler then I will. The thing nowadays is UML (or SYSML for embedded) but you really need to speak it to read it, and a flow chart is understandable without prior training.

I'm using flow charts / state diagrams all the time. Helps to break down problems in pieces and write code others can understand.

[SiliconWizard]

" Global pollution has been steadily, unexcitingly, reducing for 60+ years."


I would like to read more about that.  Is there a source you can supply?

The problem with that is you can make figures say what you want and its opposite.

Here, the point is too vague to allow eliciting any relevant figure IMHO.
We need to define what pollution means, to begin with. What are the pollutants included? Are we considering absolute levels, or relative to the allowed levels that keep changing over the years?

The decrease is probably true for some pollutants, and absolutely not for others. The impact on health is also hard to determine for some of them. So, as it's hard, we can claim there is none.

[snarkysparky]

Pollution level is the relative mass density of non natural materials in the environment.

I am of the opinion that the hockey stick has been verified independent of the original Mann study dozens of times since his publication.  True ??

[Siwastaja]

What "nonnatural"? Supernatural? From the fifth dimension?

If you just mean "amount of something exceeding what would be there without human", then how are you going to reliably simulate what the levels would be without human contribution? You know just volcanic activity spews sulfur compounds into the atmosphere.

You make it sound like an easy definition but it really isn't. All we can do is to approximate, simulate, and discuss.

Exact and robust definitions is the foundation for fruitful scientific discussion.

[Nominal Animal]

Pollution level is the relative mass density of non natural materials in the environment.

I guess the largest disagreements and differences are in the definition, "non-natural".

Some, like plastics, are easy, since they are so rare in nature we can count all of them as non-natural.

Carbon dioxide is particularly difficult, because even small increase in temperature at the continental shelf seabottom can release significant amounts from methane clathrates; similarly for permafrost in the Arctic, especially Siberia.

Volcanic activity (atmospheric particulates and ash) and even large wildfires throw all sorts of air pollution measurements haywire, because we just cannot differentiate the sources; we can only infer and assume.  It also throws off any sulphur dioxide measurements.

Soil pollution is the one I personally am most interested in, but it seems to be very hard to find any kind of global statistics on that.  Most countries don't gather any.
(It annoys me to no end that general population is unable to understand that powdered depleted uranium is much more deadly than chunks of radioactive uranium.  As a heavy metal, it is at least twice as chemically poisonous than the effects of radiation; that is, the LD₅₀ of depleted uranium in powdered form is the same as for radioactive uranium isotopes, because it is chemically deadlier than say mercury or lead.)

I don't know how much peer review lends credence to gathered statistics, but I suspect not very much.  There is so much politics in gathering statistics, publishing findings, and peer review, that the systematic errors are significant.  It is good that we can discuss which statistics are believable and which not, and why –– although this is the wrong thread for that; I apologise to the OP, for participating in thread-derailing! –– but a plain "I don't think so" without the basis as to why is not useful, because it cannot be considered on its merit: it is relying on authority, which I absolutely hate.  (Argumentum ab auctoritate )
To repeat, the links I provided are to an organization that would benefit more from fear-mongering and danger-alerting, which is why I consider their report of reducing air pollution and better sanitation credible: I do not see how they'd benefit from reporting that if it was false, only the opposite.

[metebalci]

I am computer engineering student(Our curriculum is 80% similar to electronics engineering in our country so you can call me electronics engineering student as well tbh). But this thing is relevant to electronics engineering as well so I am asking it here. I still don't know how to program. I of course can code very tiny tiny programs like prime number etc etc...But I am nowhere near the level of building big programs like using frameworks to make stuffs and so on.

I dont know at which year you are in the university. It can be very similar in the first two years, and it is not necessarily a bad thing. It was ~20y ago, but I studied both of the programs (electronics & computer), so I know similarities and differences pretty well (of course biased, depends on country and university). Also, you say your program is named computer engineering, usually computer engineering is more close to electronics than computer science programs.

If after first two/two-and-a-half years they are still too similar (which is weird, either electronics is too computer-ish, or computer is too electronic-ish), check the curriculum of the computer degree program of a few well known universities. There are very basic, and must have classes that should be common, so if you miss any of these in your university, try to study on your own, so many very good resources on internet now.

Of course these are relative terms, there are exceptions and no rules, but you will probably be nowhere near writing a "big" software until you finish the school and work for a few years. Dont worry if this is the case, it is normal.

I learnt c, c++ and python and bit of javascript. But all of them were useless. I learnt programming languages and not programming.

It is pretty difficult to "know" computer languages to an extent you can say you are comfortable with them to express what you want well. I learned BASIC and Pascal when I was a kid, used them many years for fun. I learned and used c after high school often, but I can never say I know it well. I used c++ somehow at an advanced level for a time period during commercial game development, I remember almost none now. I used python maybe for 15 years, but never made a big software, so I cant say I know it. I loved LISP variants (Clojure), I am nowhere near knowing it. I used Java heavily and commercially, even with that it was hard to say I know it well. The comfort you have with the languages all depend on exercise. As you do with a foreign language or a musical instrument, the more and heavily you use one, you become more and more comfortable using it. When you know a language better, you also get better at expressing yourself with that language. When you know the computer science basics, it is not difficult to express a problem with them if you are comfortable with the language. Neither alone is enough to get better at programming.

It is early for you to think about this but also languages have a certain history and have a different level or sense of expression. C, Java and Python are all very different, LISP is another world. You would not like programming in Java if you write a device driver, you would not like C if you do something else etc. Unfortunately it takes time to have a sense of this, and cannot be learned from the books alone.

I know assebly language coding in 8085 and 8086 microprocessor. I didn't learn 8051 quite well though.

Programming itself is a large topic like computer science and electronics eng. It is easy to say you have to focus on something, but it is hard to do (what to focus on?). But at the end you will not be good at many things, so accept it as early as possible. Once, I knew PC architecture pretty well, then I knew Windows pretty well, then I knew mobile world well, then backend/server etc., but this covers like 25-30 years. I only coded a very simple device driver once for fun, so it is normal to not know things. After some time, the important thing is not to know how to do it, but to know how to learn how to do it.

Because you mentioned the CPUs, one of the classes you have to learn well is computer architecture. This is normally not taught in electronics. The other classes, most of them if not all, normally not taught in electronics: algorithm analysis, operating systems, abstract math/formal languages/automata theory, computer networks. Depending on what you do, you might not use what you learned in some of these classes at all, but they will give you something valuable which can be applied anytime to any problem.

There are also artificial intelligence and machine learning classes, but they might be advanced and given only at post-graduate level.

I think this question is relevant to electronics engineering students in my country(Nepal) as most electronics engineering students pursue career in coding like web development. Any way, coding is essential part of electronics engineering, we all know about that.

Probably in many countries if not all countries, there are more computer/IT/software related jobs than electronics, so I think it is pretty normal particularly if the country does not have a strong electronics industry (nothing against Nepal, only a few countries have strong electronics industry).

I am currently learning python. I learnt syntax of python. And I am currently solving codewars problems. I read other person's solutions as well and try to understand at least 5 different solutions to a problem. My logic has improved a bit in programming but I consciously want to know how to improve my logic in programming? What else can I do to improve my logic in programming? Any guidance will be extremely valuable.

Other than learning the basics from the books, lectures etc. I think two best things to do; 1) read others code (so many very good open source projects), 2) write code (find a project, fix something in another project or do internship/work part-time in a company). Python is a good choice by the way. If you have hard time to find a project, just copy the idea and re-implement a simple version of an existing software (e.g. write a web server).

[MarkMLl]

(It annoys me to no end that general population is unable to understand that powdered depleted uranium is much more deadly than chunks of radioactive uranium.  As a heavy metal, it is at least twice as chemically poisonous than the effects of radiation; that is, the LD₅₀ of depleted uranium in powdered form is the same as for radioactive uranium isotopes, because it is chemically deadlier than say mercury or lead.)

Obligatory "Nearing Zero": https://sites.google.com/site/htzhaocn2/nz017.jpg

MarkMLl

[brucehoult]

Oh, the hockey stick is just completely debunked. Once it was known what algorithm/code was used by Mann, it was shown that feeding any set of completely random data into his algorithm would produce a hockey stick.

I do not believe that that has been established with any degree of confidence, i.e. that any paper attempting to debunk the "hockey stick curve" has passed peer review and been accepted by a major journal.

Better than that, Mann's source code is available (has been for quite some years) and you can run it yourself.

[rstofer]

There are also artificial intelligence and machine learning classes, but they might be advanced and given only at post-graduate level.

Wouldn't Linear Algebra be part of any undergrad STEM program?  I remember spending some amount of time on matrix inversion, multiplication and such clear back prior to '73.  We only did up to 4x4 but we did it by hand, very few students had access to a computer (I was one of them).  I'm far from competent in ML but it seems to me that all of this AI stuff is based on Linear Algebra (and Partial Differential Equations).