Explaining NULL and Empty to your 6-year old?

Posted by Atomiton on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Atomiton
Published on 2010-04-22T20:24:11Z Indexed on 2010/04/22 20:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 280

Filed under:

teaching

|

null

|

language-agnostic

I'm thinking in terms of Objects here. I think it's important to simplify ideas. If you can explain this to a 6-year old, you can teach new programmers the difference.

I'm thinking that a cookie object would be apropos:

public class Cookie {
  public string flavor {get; set; }
  public int numberOfCrumbs { get; set; }
}

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about teaching

Language+IDE for teaching high school students?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm investigating languages and IDEs for a project involving teaching high-school students (around grade 11). It will teach basics of programming as an introduction to computer science (e.g., including how numbers/strings/characters are represented, using procedures and arrays, control flow, a little… >>> More
Decisions in teaching someone else to program: language selection

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
My friend would like for me to guide her into learning programming. She's already proven enormous aptitude for thinking like a programmer but is scared of the idea of programming since in her mind it's relegated to some magical realm accessible only to smart people and trained computer scientists… >>> More
teaching my self Z/OS assembler?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
'I've interned at a company that does a lot of mainframe work. Most of my mainframe experience has been using Java and Unix System Services. I've had some experience with the ISPF interface and C but none with assembler. I’m graduating shortly and will be taking an independent study my last semester… >>> More
Testing harness for online teaching?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have been asked to teach an online programming course, and I am looking for a test harness especially geared to education. Some students will have significant coding experience, but others will be total newbies. The course is an introduction to software development, mostly taught in C with some… >>> More
Running an intern program

as seen on ASP.net Weblogs - Search for 'ASP.net Weblogs'
This year I am running an unpaid internship program for high school students. I work for a small company. We have ideas for a few side projects but never have time to do them. So we experiment by making them intern projects. In return, we give these interns guidance to learn, personal attentions,… >>> More

Related posts about null

How do I fix a noisy input device (Internal Mic)? snd_hda_intel - debug included

as seen on Ask Ubuntu - Search for 'Ask Ubuntu'
As the title says, I'm having trouble with a very noisy audio input device - the internal mic or any plugged in mics. So far I've narrowed it down to an problem in ALSA since my debug info is showing a lot of "null" values. Can anyone help? Debug Info: http://www.alsa-project.org/db/?f=e0c6fb7e10624bf7691aa2b405cf0d3968e56c63 Exert… >>> More
So which null equals this null, that null? maybe this null, or is it this null?

as seen on SQL Blogcasts - Search for 'SQL Blogcasts'
Tuning takes many routes and I get into some interesting situations and often make some exciting finds, see http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/archive/2010/05/17/just-when-you-thought-it-was-safe.aspx for an example. Today I encountered a multitude of Foreign Key constraints on a table, now… >>> More
MySql query optimization help

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have few queries and am not able to figure out how to optimize them, QUERY 1 select * from t_twitter_tracking where classified is null and tweetType='ENGLISH' order by id limit 500; QUERY 2 Select count(*) as cnt, DATE_FORMAT(CONVERT_TZ(wrdTrk.createdOnGMTDate,'+00:00','+05:30'),'%Y-%m-%d')… >>> More
MySQL Database Query Problem

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I need your help!!!. I need to query a table in my database that has record of goods sold. I want the query to detect a particular product and also calculate the quantity sold. The product are 300 now, but it would increase in the future. Below is a sample of my DB Table #---------------------------- #… >>> More
Null check error message as "is null" or "was null"

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
When doing null checks in Java code, and you throw IllegalArgumentExceptions for null values, what kind of message template do you use? We tend to use something like this public User getUser(String username){ if (username == null){ throw new IllegalArgumentException("username is null");… >>> More