Tag: Computer Science

How much time does a person need to learn HTML?

Here is a question for technical people among your – how much time does a person need to learn HTML?

The reason I am asking is that I gave to one of our newer colleagues a whole weekend (from Friday evening until Monday morning ) to do it.  I promised to unleash all my fury and beat him severely with a stick, if I will find something that he doesn’t know by Monday 09:00am.

Now, before you will call me cruel, I’ll give you a couple of more details.  The person who I gave the task isn’t just a random fellow from the street.   He’s someone holding a Bachelor of Computer Science degree from a known UK university.   He has also studied Computer Science in USA and Cyprus, and even has some experience in the field of programming and web development.  So, yes, I would have expected him to know this stuff already, but somehow it happened that he doesn’t, and now he’ll have to catch up with it.

Also, when I gave out the task, I was as soft as I usually am.  So, I  provided the person with all the necessary learning materials, including digital copies of O’Reilly books, famous web sites, and relevant Google queries.

Am I fair with my timing?   How much time would you need to learn HTML?  Should I beat up the person on Monday even if he learns it inside out?  These are the questions rushing through my head right now…

Archives of Edsger W. Dijkstra

Archive of all Edsger W. Dijkstra works can be found here. For those of you who don’t know who he was, here is a quote from the site:

Edsger Wybe Dijkstra was one of the most influential members of computing science’s founding generation. Among the domains in which his scientific contributions are fundamental are

  • algorithm design
  • programming languages
  • program design
  • operating systems
  • distributed processing
  • formal specification and verification
  • design of mathematical arguments

In addition, Dijkstra was intensely interested in teaching, and in the relationships between academic computing science and the software industry.

During his forty-plus years as a computing scientist, which included positions in both academia and industry, Dijkstra’s contributions brought him many prizes and awards, including computing science’s highest honor, the ACM Turing Award.

Most of his papers make for a rather entertaining read. (For example, the thingy about hungry professors and semaphores).