Bloom's Taxonomy for Learning

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a framework that breaks the learning process into stages. According to Bloom, learning begins with rote memorization and the process progresses upward until we can apply what we’ve learned in creative new ways.

Youthful Bias

Most of my formal education was science or engineering oriented. I regarded science and engineering as the pinnacle of learning. The extreme position of my youth: All logic fell within math and science, while history, language arts, and other non-science areas were just memorization.

Bloom’s research pushed me beyond my original thinking. Memorization and creativity are vital to all areas of knowledge. Here’s how.

Using rlwrap with MIT's Scheme REPL

Users of the Linux or OS X command line know that they can hit the up arrow to view the previously executed command. However, this behavior is missing from the mit-scheme read-evaluate-print-loop (REPL). mit-scheme is the language used in SICP.

For example, hitting the up arrow in the Scheme REPL gives us this non-useful result: ^[[A. The previous command is not repeated.

How do we add up-arrow functionality to the mit-scheme REPL? By using rlwrap.

Apple Car? Not Likely.

You have to figure out what your own aptitudes are. If you play games where other people have the aptitudes and you don’t, you’re going to lose. And that’s as close to certain as any prediction that you can make. You have to figure out where you’ve got an edge. And you’ve got to play within your own circle of competence.

~Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman, Berkshire Hathaway

Some journalists speculate that Apple is building a car because they recently hired some automotive engineers away from Tesla.

HTML5 & CSS3: The Complete Manual

The biggest challenge for a software developer: Absorbing the latest knowledge while simultaneously keeping clients happy. Where does the time go?

Fortunately, when it comes to HTML5 and CSS3, a UK-based publisher has released a just-the-facts guide that may help. At 127 pages, the entire publication (they call it a bookazine) can be devoured in a single day. Imagine Publishing’s HTML5 & CSS3: The Complete Manual is well worth the time investment.

Note: A version of this article also appears in the Book Reviews section of ChicagoRuby.org.

JRuby 9000 on Mac OS X

Moore’s Law is about to run into a wall. Therefore, anything that software developers can learn about concurrency will be critical in coming years. Enter JRuby 9000.