Four short links: 8 October 2010

Training Tricks, Visualizing Code, ASM+XML=ASMXML, and Poetic License

  1. Training Lessons Learned: Interactivity (Selena Marie Deckelmann) — again I see parallels between how the best school teachers work and the best trainers. I was working with a group of people with diverse IT backgrounds, and often, I asked individuals to try to explain in their own words various terms (like “transaction”). This helped engage the students in a way that simply stating definitions can’t. Observing their fellow students struggling with terminology helped them generate their own questions, and I saw the great results the next day – when students were able to define terms immediately, that took five minutes the day before to work through.
  2. Software Evolution Storylines — very pretty visualizations of code development, inspired by an xkcd comic.
  3. asmxml — XML parser written in assembly language. (via donaldsclark on Twitter)
  4. Poetic License — the BSD license, translated into verse. Do tractor workers who love tractors a lot translate tractor manuals into blank verse? Do the best minds of plumber kid around by translating the California State Code into haikus? Computer people are like other people who love what they do. Computer people just manipulate symbols, whether they’re keywords in Perl or metrical patterns in software licenses. It’s not weird, really. I promise.
tags: , , , , , ,