What Don’t You Understand That You’d Like To?
What don’t you understand about computers and computing that you’d like to? I’m not talking about big stuff, like “How does it all work, anyway?” or, “How do I write a game that’s as addictive as BubbleSpinner?” What don’t you understand about smaller-scale stuff, like handwriting recognition or how Excel knows which cells to update when you change a number or how your machine decides that it’s time to update Java and what it does next. Please let me know, or if you’re feeling shy, point your friends at this page and have them ask for you—we have to use something as motivating examples for this course, and if we can explain something interesting while teaching you fundamental computing concepts, so much the better.
Categories: Content
I’d like to know more about hardware interfaces, about how computers communicate with external hardware and acquire data through different ports. Ideally, how to do this effectively with Python (e.g. with PySerial, etc…).
Many scientists are used to relying on proprietary and locked interfaces that are provided by vendors. Those hamper the use of general computing environments for data processing by usually piping the data through their own analysis software in order to create a nasty vendor lock-in that makes practicing open science nearly impossible.