Wing Surveys Her New Opportunity

Wing Surveys Her New Opportunity - Microsoft Research

Wing Surveys Her New Opportunity - Microsoft Research: Wing Surveys Her New Opportunity
By Rob Knies
February 28, 2013 1:15 PM PT
When Jeannette Wing joined Microsoft Research in January 2013 as a Microsoft vice president and head of Microsoft Research International, in charge of Microsoft Research’s non-U.S. labs, she brought with her a sterling set of credentials. She had served long and well as head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University and for three years as assistant director of the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). A recipient of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wing has a broad range of expertise, ranging from the foundations of trustworthy computing to software specification and verification to concurrent and distributed systems to programming languages and methodology. A month into her new job, she found time for a wide-ranging discussion about her new role and what she sees ahead.

Q: Why Microsoft Research, and why now?

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Problem Solving Open educational Resource

Another new Open Education Resource (OER) has been made available by the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton. Problem-Solving Author: Dr Scott Turner http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19001 Details These mini lectures are intended for undergraduate computing students, for providing simple steps in problem solving before the students learn a programming language. Problem-Solving and Programming is a common first year undergraduate module on the BSc Computing Programme at the University of Northampton. This material was taken from the problem solving part of the module and provides an introduction to five topics in problem-solving. The resource can be found at: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19001 After one week on JORUM 93 downloads and 12 views of the OER.

One of the best blogs of 2010

The blog Confessions of a mediocre programmer by Alan Norton is one of the most interesting blogs I read in 2010. Including a great definition of a Mediocre Programmer: " Mediocre programmer - A programmer who has a limited toolset. He knows the syntax of only the simplest commands, but he knows where to find the syntax for more complex commands. He doesn’t know how to write the most efficient code, but he knows how to rewrite and test the code for greater efficiency if he must. He runs into more roadblocks along his passage to success, but he views each as a challenge and is confident that he will find a path around each roadblock. He may take longer to get there, but he always reaches his goal. He doesn’t know how to create a DLL, but he knows he can if necessary. Like most programmers, he doesn’t particularly like documenting his work but does so anyway because he is a professional. " Alan Norton (2010) A definition which in their heart of hearts a lot of success...

Problem-solving or computational Thinking

Confession time, this has been a research interest for me, along with a number of colleagues, since around 2005. It started with undergraduate students - investigating teaching and developing problem solving skills as a first step in developing programming skills through the use of LEGO-based robots and graphics based programming for undergraduate students. The main vehicle then for developing the problem-solving skills was the LEGO RCX Mindstorms robotics kits and series of gradually more challenging robot-based tasks. Lawhead et al (2003) stated that robots “…provide entry level programming students with a physical model to visually demonstrate concepts” and “the most important benefit of using robots in teaching introductory courses is the focus provided on learning language independent, persistent truths about programming and programming techniques. Robots readily illustrate the idea of computation as interaction”. Synergies can be made with our wo...

Problem-solving

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