Got a new mac... what now?

A few of my friends have recently got their first mac... so what things would I recommend for anyone switching from PC to Mac?

Realise that it will take some time to get started with a new platform... and switching to mac is the same. You will need to spend some time really getting used to using the Mac, but the effort will be worth it.

1: What can I do with my PC data and apps I need to use?

I think the key to switching is to immerse yourself in the new platform and avoid using the old one for a few weeks... otherwise the temptation will always be to revert back to using Windows and you will never really get the benefits a Mac has to offer.

However, for somethings you do need Windows... Visual Studio for example. I use Parallels Desktop for Mac. Its a virtual machine, and allows you to run Windows, or other operating systems, under Mac OS. I have found this has worked really well for me. If you are moving from an existing PC, you can also make use of Parallels Transporter. It can be used to create a Virtual Machine image of your existing PC. You can then use this as a full backup, ensuring you don't lose any of those important settings or data from your PC.

An alternative to Parallels is Virtual Box. I know a few people who have used this, but I haven't tried it myself. The benefit of this is that it is free...

I don't think it has an equivalent to Parallels Transporter, but you cant argue with the price.

2: What general things should I know about?

Well there are many but here are a few important points:

• Clicking the Red x on the top left corner only closes the window, in many cases the program is still running. You need to use the Quit link from the program's menu.
• Running programs appear in the Dock with a small light blue ball under it.
• You can quit a program by right clicking on the program in the Dock.
• System Preferences is the equivalent to Control Panel.
• Learn to use Expose.
• Command replaces control for many shortcuts - Command Q quits for example.

Things you need to configure:

• Make sure you turn on two finger scrolling, and secondary clicks with two fingers in Trackpad settings in System Preferences.
• Set the right button on the mouse to secondary click.

3: What Mac programs should I look at using?

If you use any form of chat, you'll want to get Adium, a free chat client that can be used to chat with MSN, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and others... There are heaps of extras that really make it an impressive application. The duck image is really cute, and the many replacement dock images are worth looking at.

Textmate is a fantastic text editor for developers. Its not free, but it is well worth the price. It comes with many extensions, such as Project Plus that integrates SVN flags into the project draw. The extensions for different code formats are also worth looking at.

Office for Mac is likely to be another program that you need. It is mostly compatible with the Windows version, though the 2008 edition is missing VBA support. I have both the 2008 and the 2004 version installed.

There are some alternatives to Office such as NeoOffice, and Apple's iWork. I have been using iWork for a number of tasks, and it is great at creating presentations (in Keynote) and documents (in Pages). It is not as full featured as Office, but I have found it easier to get the layout I want in many cases.

 

Well that should be enough to get started with... 

Plans for APS

Next year I will be teaching Algorithmic Problem Solving (APS) in first semester, a subject that I have developed and worked on over a few years. At the start of this year I trialled portfolio assessment with some success in this subject, though I improved on this in semester 2 with Object Oriented Programming. So what am I going to do differently next year?

Greater focus on the portfolio assessment: The portfolio assessment was good in this subject last year, but the focus can be even better. I found that this helped the students focus on what was important in OOP, the intended learning outcomes. My plan is to provide assessed learning activities during the semester, the resulting work will then be included in the students' portfolios. 

Simpler book: The first few times I ran this subject we used the language manual that comes with the language we are using. Its very dry, and not presented in an order that is useful for learning. This year I tried providing my own details, but didn't really get that right. So next year I will be providing a new book.

The book is what I am focusing on now. This will use a syntax based approach to learning the language, along with clear descriptions and illustrations to help students understand the programming abstractions. At this stage I have the following sections for the book:

1. Programs - introduces the Program abstraction and a large number of new "programming language" terms such as identifier, keyword, procedure, procedure call, expression, literal, etc.
2. Creating Procedures - focuses on creating your own procedures. 
3. Storing and Using data - variables, and the assignment statement.
4. Passing Data Around - introduces parameters (both in, out, and in/out).
5. Calculating Values - covers functions and function calls.
6. External Libraries - introduces units, shows how to use external units, and provides an example function from the SysUtils unit.
7. User Input - Up to this stage we will have been using literal values, but now all of the framework is in place to understand user input. This includes ReadLn, as well as reading command line arguments.
8. Branching - Indicates the change from programming "infrastructure" to control flow, and algorithm design.
9. Looping - For, while, repeat, etc...
10. Data abstractions - now the focus changes to the programming abstractions for data. This will include arrays, records and pointers.
11. Creating Libraries - Lastly onto creating your own programming libraries

My idea for this is to have each section as self contained as possible. Knowledge will be built up without the need for any "magic". This is the reason for delaying user input... this requires functions and out parameters, with library use being necessary if you want to convert values from strings to integers for example.

These 11 chapters will be covered in the first five weeks of the semester. Week one will cover 1 & 2, week two will be 3 & 4, week three on 5, 6 & 7, week four on 8 & 9, and week five on 10 & 11. This leaves seven weeks of the semester to learn about how these abstractions are used to create programs. 

Along with this I am aiming to keep the explanation of each concept or part of the syntax down to a single page, where possible. This is enough room to convey the important aspects, but not too much that the end result is overwhelming. It should also help to create a useful reference, where each idea has its own page. So far I am up to chapter 5 which start at page 39, so there isn't too may pages per chapter.

Let me know what you think. I'll post up some chapters later...