Computer scientist and educator. Creator of ChessCraft. Senior scientific programmer at Environment Canada.
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
When I post tutorial videos people often make suggestions on how to improve my computer code. Thank you for your code suggestions! However, we may have a problem.
I often find that code suggestions are not teaching suggestions. Almost all computer programmers are not experienced educators, so this is understandable …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
Hidden Figures is a 2016 movie about the 1960s space race, the early days of computation, and segregation. It's an uplifting movie - described by some as "cheesy". However the cheese serves to distinguish it from other films in its genre which are typically very dark and gritty. It's an underdog …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
Name one thing you liked about Trump's campaign. If you can't, consider the possibility that your political views are unbalanced and biased. If you look hard enough, you should never agree or disagree 100% with a political platform.
Name one thing you disliked about Clinton's campaign. If you can't, similar …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
This is an incredible century to witness the births of technologies. The past couple weeks I've been observing the world's first augmented reality global hit. Enjoy the innocence while it lasts! In this post I'm going to talk about aspects of Pokemon Go that aren't being talked about much:
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
Are you excited about automation yet? You should be. Here's a great video to get us started:
But I'm tired of all these misconceptions about automation replacing jobs! Consider these statements:
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
What matters here is having a Prime Minister who wants us to stop laughing when the media asks a politician about science.
Justin Trudeau was jokingly asked to explain quantum computing at a university of Waterloo press event. The room full of reporters laughed. He …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
When I post tutorial videos, I get a lot of requests for personalized help. I want to help! Your project might even sound really cool to me. But here I'm going to explain why I probably cannot help you today.
One of the exciting things about the …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
"Yeh, If your a experianced coder, five mins no problem but if your a bigginer it can take hours." - Rowen Henderson8
"it would help a lot if you ppl would copy and paste the code into your videos on the bottom." - Emjay Club
"Fantastic but please add the script somewhere …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
The Open Organization by Jim Whitehurst describes the open source software company Red Hat. It does a great job introducing Red Hat's unusual culture, but it was also written by the CEO so the stories and ideas are mind-numbingly positive. If you can get past its repetitious optimism then it's …
Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog
What's the longest journey you've ever taken through university bureaucracy? Mine is probably longer. After five months of appeals, I'm finally able to register at Concordia as a McGill student for an equivalent course. Just like the comic above - I was arbitrarily denied for no good reason after getting approval …