SCF Computers Library

[Silkworm]

This thread is intended to be a database for links pertaining to information covered by this sub-forum. Links to tutorials, videos, interactive media, etc. will be listed and categorized here. Please feel free to submit any additions for this library in this format:

Name of the Website, Link, 1 sentence description and then possibly a suggestion of what category (tutorials, videos, etc.) the link should go in.

Example:

The eSkeletons Project, http://www.eskeletons.org/, An interactive examination of primate morphology, Interactive Media

This is an example of how the link will be listed with the name of the contributor in parentheses at the end.

Interactive Media

The eSkeletons Project, http://www.eskeletons.org/. An interactive examination of primate morphology. (Silkworm)

Submissions will be listed by category on this particular post, which will be edited to serve as the SCF Computers Library, a living document. And as it is living, it will change. Categories added and links added and removed as there is demand for it.

A few quick notes:

1.Please contribute your links. Our combined efforts will make this a valuable and comprehensive internet resource.
2.Please report broken links, make comments, here.
3.If you feel a site is at the apex of quality please endorse it. Recommended links will have a “*” added to them. These should not be taken lightly and only added to the best of the best.


SCF Computers Library

Computer Mathematics

Elementary Computer Mathematics, http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/comath/text.html

[lucretiaX]

Slashdot. Most current news on computers and open source.(more linux based).
http://slashdot.org/

CNet. Great place for news and media driven computers
http://news.com.com/

Government computer news. The current alerts from the governement.
http://www.gcn.com/

PC World. Current technology and new toys out on the market. Great for reviews.
http://www.pcworld.com/

Wired. Technology oriented news. Mostly fluff.
http://www.wired.com/

Online Newspaper for open source computing.
http://www.newsforge.com/

Freshmeat. Largest index of Unix and cross-platform open source software.
http://freshmeat.net/

Sourceforge. Largest open source development site.
http://sourceforge.net/docs/about

[lucretiaX]

Linux for beginners. Talks about reasons to switch, picking the OS that is right for you and provides easy downloads to try.
http://www.linux.org/

Types of distributions I've tried:

Ubuntu.
One of the easiest and newest linux distributions available. Recommended for beginners and people looking to learn more about computers. Very user friendly and Windows based appearance. Based on the stronger distribution of Debian and gaining more support.
http://www.ubuntu.com/

Debian.
My favorite. A very strong distribution with a rich and active community. Not recommended for beginners. More programmer and computer savvy oriented. Great media support.
http://www.us.debian.org/

SUSE.
The Novell backed Linux distrubution. One of the few distributions that you pay for due to their tech support program. Used by a few companies and very user friendly. Great for beginners who just want their computer to work.
http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org

GenToo.
The do-it-yourself Linux distro. Not recommended for beginners. Very bare bones and teaches you building packages and internals from the ground up. Excellent for people wanting to learn everything, who have patience, and love to get their hands dirty.
http://www.gentoo.org/

RedHat.
One of the most famous Linux distributions. Okay for beginners, better for intermediates. A sturdy distro with a good community. Fedora is the open source project. And is widely used and supported decently, although some media issues.
http://www.redhat.com/

[easlern]

Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures:
http://www.nist.gov/dads/

A very useful reference for, well, algorithms and data structures. :) It's a good jumping off point for learning about techniques they don't always cover in school.

[xcthulhu]

Hey All!

So I thought I'd share a few online courses I've run across for learning Computer Science online:

Dan Grossman's Programming Language course:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ ... p505/06sp/

MIT OpenCourseware's Introduction to Algorithms:
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-En ... ourseHome/

The National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning -
AI: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 02910E57B8
Data Structures: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... AF2E1C572F
Algorithm Design: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 6B3312DF1E

There are some others from nptel but I haven't really looked at them.

Also, for those into Haskell, there's the Catster's lectures on monads:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... 9846EC843E

Anyone else know of any good online resources?

[kidjan]

Very nice stuff, especially the MIT course. I'll have to go over that one in my spare time. I love shortest path algorithms and dynamic programming!

[xcthulhu]

Here are some O'Reilly texts that are floating around, freely (as in beerly) available on the internet:

Developing Applications with Objective Caml:
http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/

Real World Haskell:
http://book.realworldhaskell.org/

...perhaps someone else knows of texts for one of them thar non-functional (I guess the technical name is "imperative") programming languages, which I understand are popular on the other side of the ivory towers of academia ;P

Also, regarding Haskell, Hoogle is amazing for hacking: http://www.haskell.org/hoogle/

[wolfhnd]

Tim Gowers - Computational Complexity and Quantum Computation Lectures

The collection will have 12 graduate level lectures which are currently being given during the Easter term 2009.

http://sms.cam.ac.uk/collection/545358

Computational complexity is the study of what resources, such as time and memory, are needed to carry out given computational tasks, with a particular focus on lower bounds for the amount needed of these resources. Proving any result of this kind is notoriously difficult, and includes the famous problem of whether P = N P . This course will be focused on two major results in the area. The first is a lower bound, due to Razborov, for the number of steps needed to determine whether a graph contains a large clique, if only “monotone” computations are allowed. This is perhaps the strongest result in the direction of showing that P and N P are distinct (though there is unfortunately a very precise sense in which the proof cannot be developed to a proof of the whole conjecture). The second is Peter Shor’s remarkable result that a quantum computer can factorize large integers in polynomial time.

[seouldavid]

There are many good online resources related to computer science and engineering such as audio/video lectures from colleges, lecture notes and online journals. The following site is one of them. It provides a comprehensive collection of links to audio/video courses and lectures in computer science and engineering from colleges/universities around the world.

http://www.infocobuild.com/education/audio-video-courses/computer-science/computer-science.html

The courses and lectures contained cover a wide variety of subjects in computer science and engineering, including artificial intelligence, computer architecture, computer networks, data structures, operating system, and software engineering.

[xcthulhu]

I thought I would mention some favorite ways that programmers procrastinate:

News Feeds:

• Hacker News - http://news.ycombinator.com/
• Reddit /r/programming - http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/
• Slashdot - http://slashdot.org/

More Productive:

• Project Euler (computer mathematics puzzles): http://projecteuler.net/
• Peer to Patent (stop patent trolls in your spare time): http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/

[xcthulhu]

Most programmers like to use example code when they are trying to write something for the first time.

There's one kind of programming where I always look to examples: visualization. Not only that, but visualization examples can be downright beautiful, and illustrate immediately to you that certain things are possible that you didn't think about before:

I use two computer graphics systems all the time:
Matplotlib - plotting software for python
TikZ - a graphing system for LaTeX

I typically use matplotlib for when I have to plot datasets, and TikZ when I have to draw graphs like Kripke structures, Turing machines, Hasse diagrams or commutative diagrams.

• Python MatPlotLib gallery of examples: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/gallery.html
• TikZ gallery of examples: http://www.texample.net/tikz/examples/

[kidjan]

It's a little vocational, but this page has literally saved my ass in the past few months:

Bit Fiddling Hacks

In particular...Brian Kernighan's bit-counting algorithm:

Code: Select all

unsigned int v; // count the number of bits set in v
unsigned int c; // c accumulates the total bits set in v
for (c = 0; v; c++)
{
  v &= v - 1; // clear the least significant bit set
}

...is truly a thing of beauty

[xcthulhu]

I have found this article extremely helpful in understanding correct linux device driver design, although it is a little dated:

Arjan van de Ve, "How to NOT write kernel driver" (2002):
http://www.fenrus.org/how-to-not-write- ... -paper.pdf