Summer camp for coders

ANGLAIS SCIENTIFIQUE ET TECHNIQUE
Fiche de travail
Niveau : intermédiaire
OBJECTIFS
> COMPREHENSION GENERALE ET DETAILLEE D’UN ARTICLE DE PRESSE A COLORATION TECHNIQUE
> LEXIQUE : GRAMMATICALISATION, SIGLAISON, AMALGAMES LEXICAUX (MOTS-VALISE), BLOGS & PODCASTS
> SYNTAXE : LA FORME INTERROGATIVE, LES ARTICLES, COMPARATIF & SUPERLATIF
 1. Overall comprehension: read the passage and tick the right answer(s)
Summer Camp for Coders
Sep. 15th 2005
[From The Economist - print edition]
Software: Google's new scheme keeps young geeks busy over the summer and boosts opensource development
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“I'm A total geek all around,” says Angela Byron, a 27-year-old computer programmer who has
just graduated from Nova Scotia Community College. And yet, like many other students, she “never
had the confidence” to approach any of the various open-source software communities on the
internet—distributed teams of volunteers who collaborate to build software that is then made freely
available. But thanks to Google, the world's most popular search engine and one of the biggest
proponents of open-source software, Ms Byron spent the summer contributing code to Drupal, an
open-source project that automates the management of websites. “It's awesome,” she says.
[http://drupal.org/]
Ms Byron is one of 419 students (out of 8,744 who applied) who were accepted for Google's
“summer of code”. While it sounds like a hyper-nerdy summer camp, the students neither went to
Google's campus in Mountain View, California, nor to wherever their mentors at the 41 participating
open-source projects happened to be located. Instead, Google acted as a matchmaker and sponsor.
Each of the participating open-source projects received $500 for every student it took on; and each
student received $4,500 ($500 right away, and $4,000 on completion of their work). Oh, and a T-shirt.
All of this is the idea of Chris DiBona, Google's open-source boss, who was brainstorming with
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, last year. They realised that a lot of programming
talent goes to waste every summer because students take summer jobs flipping burgers to make
money, and let their coding skills degrade. “We want to make it better for students in the summer,”
says Mr DiBona, adding that it also helps the open-source community and thus, indirectly, Google,
which uses lots of open-source software behind the scenes. Plus, says Mr DiBona, “it does become an
opportunity for recruiting.”
Elliot Cohen, a student at Berkeley, spent his summer writing a “Bayesian network toolbox” for
Python, an open-source programming language. “I'm a pretty big fan of Google,” he says. He has an
interview scheduled with Microsoft, but “Google is the only big company that I would work at,” he
says. And if that doesn't work out, he now knows people in the open-source community, “and it's a lot
less intimidating.”
The Economist - Summer Camp for Coders ; Sep. 15th 2005
a) Where did Angela Byron study?
 Halifax, Nova Scotia  San Francisco, California  Seattle, Washington  Denver, Colorado
b) What is Google?
 A web portal
 A search engine  An open-source software  A stock market company
c) Where is Google's campus located?
 In North Carolina
 In New York
 In California  In Florida
d) What role did Google play between the students and the open-source projects managers? Google
was...
 A coordinator
 An intermediary  A mentor
 A sponsor
e) Berkeley student Elliot Cohen would like to be recruited by...
 Ebay
 Google
 Microsoft
 Sony
 2. Detailed comprehension
 True  False : Angela Byron flunked her exams last semester.
 True  False : Apparently, it is pretty hard to enter open-source software communities on the web.
 True  False : Open-source software are usually more expensive than the others.
 True  False : It is now clear that Google is strongly opposed to the development of open-source software.
 True  False : Drupal is an old operating system originally developed by Microsoft.
 True  False : Angela was really impressed by the Drupal project and she definitely enjoyed it.
 True  False : Google's Summer of code is a vacation camp for programmers fed up with coding software.
 True  False : Students have to attend seminars at the Google campus before entering Summer of code.
 True  False : Students at the Google summer of code are rewarded with video games and consoles.
 True  False : Summer of code was created in order to prevent students wasting time doing seasonal jobs.
 True  False : Summer of code certainly serves to promote Google's interest.
 True  False : Some talented students may eventually work for Google.
 True  False : Elliot Cohen was recently hired by Google.
 True  False : At the end of the day, Summer of code is a good way to meet new people.
 3. Formuler les questions qui correspondent aux segments soulignés
a) Angela Byron [is] a 27-year-old computer programmer who has just graduated from Nova Scotia
Community College. (l.1/2)
Who is Angela Byron?
Where has she just graduated from?
b) Google acted as a matchmaker and sponsor. (l.12)
What did Google act as?
c) Each of the participating open-source projects received $500 for every student it took on. (l.13/14)
Who received $500?
What did they receive $500 for?
d) All of this is the idea of Chris DiBona, Google's open-source boss, who was brainstorming with
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders. (l.15/16)
What's all of this?
Who is Chris DiBona?
Who(m) did he brainstorm with?
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The Economist - Summer Camp for Coders ; Sep. 15th 2005
e) He has an interview scheduled with Microsoft. (l.23/24)
What company has he an interview scheduled with?
 4. Comparative & superlative
> Reformuler les énoncés ci-dessous en utilisant un comparatif de supériorité :
a) "Each of the participating open-source projects received $500 for every student it took on; and each
student received $4,500." (l.13/14)
Google gave more money to the students than to the participating open-source projects.
b) There were only 419 accepted students while about 8,744 applied.
There were more students who applied than students who were accepted.
> Compléter l'énoncé en utilisant l'adjectif entre parenthèses et un superlatif de supériorité :
c) Google is certainly the most powerful Internet company.
 5. Vocabulary
a) Find in the text the English equivalents of the following words.
Un accro de l'informatique
Disponible
Formidable
Remue-méninge
En coulisses ; en privé
Gaspiller ; gaspillage
Confiance
Doper ; stimuler
Donc ; par conséquent
Candidater
Programmer
Aptitudes ; qualités
Un intermédiaire
Moteur de recherche
Logiciel libre
Prévu
Réseau
Projet (2 mots)
Obtenir son diplôme
Une boîte à outils
a geek
available
awesome
brainstorming
behind the scenes
to waste
confidence
to boost
thus
to apply
to code / write code
skills
matchmaker
search engine
open source software
scheduled
network
scheme ; project
to graduate
toolbox
b) Donner la composition des mots suivants.
Brainstorming : Brain + Storm/ing (N + N)
Matchmaker : Match + Make/er (N+N - suffixe agentif)
 6. Articles
a) Compléter le paragraphe ci-dessous avec les articles définis, indéfinis ou l'article zéro ø.
THIS week, Google, a secretive private firm that is also the world's favourite internet search engine,
reached a regulatory tripwire that forces firms with more than 500 investors to disclose almost as
much ø information as firms listed on America's stockmarkets do. In ø Silicon Valley, where firms often
pay workers in shares as well as cash, this is common and often prompts firms to go one extra step to
an initial public offering (IPO) of shares. As a result, as The Economist went to press, Silicon Valley
and Wall Street were rife with speculation about what Google might be worth as a listed company. Not
since the Netscape IPO in 1995, which kicked off the dotcom era, have techies been so excited.
But the IPO hype around Google and its likeable and soon-to-be fabulously rich founders, Sergey
Brin and Larry Page, obscures a more subtle point. Not only is Google less strong than it looks, but an
IPO might make it even weaker at a crucial moment, since Google is about to face simultaneous
onslaughts from two fearsome rivals—Yahoo!, an internet portal that offers free e-mail and other
services, and Microsoft, computing's software superpower, which runs an internet portal of its own.
This passage is extracted from :
The Weakness of Google
Apr. 29th 2004 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist - print edition.
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The Economist - Summer Camp for Coders ; Sep. 15th 2005
b) Traduire les mots et expressions soulignés dans le passage.
Stockmarkets : les marchés financiers ; la bourse
Share : un titre ; une action
A listed company : une société cotée en bourse
Dotcom : société "point com" ; start-up
Initial public offering : Offre Publique d'Achat (OPA)
Techies : les férus de nouvelles technologies
Soon-to-be : adj. qui va bientôt devenir
Portal : un portail web
 7. Blogs & Podcasts
a) Traduire en français les termes suivants.
Upgrade ; Upload ; Download : Mettre à jour ; Télédécharger ; Télécharger
Operating System : Système d'exploitation
Email ; Spam : Courrier électronique / Courriel ; Arrosage / Pourriel
> Mots-valise : traduire puis donner la composition des termes ci-dessous.
Podcast, iPodcasting: Amalgame de IPOD + CAST ; diffusion sur un IPod (Apple) ; cf. Podcaster
(verbe en français)
Weblog ; Blogosphere, blog, blogcasting : Amalgame de WEB + LOG ; carnet de bord / journal
intime sur le web ; Blogosphère (ensemble des blogs)
Wikipedia : Amalgame de WIKI + ENCYCLOPEDIA ; encyclopédie collaborative sur le web ;
WIKI est un mot d'origine Hawaïenne qui signifie RAPIDE (QUICK ; FAST) ; un Wiki est un site
web collaboratif (cf. WikiWikiWeb - SPIP)
> Même exercice avec ces traductions françaises de podcast :
Podcastage: iPod + Broadcast + age
Balladodiffusion: ballade + diffusion
Podiffusion: iPod + diffusion
> Siglaison : que signifient les sigles et acronymes qui suivent ?
WYSIWYG : What You See Is What You Get (on obtient à l'impression ce qu'on a sur son écran)
FYI : For Your Information
W3C : World Wide Web Consortium (organisme en charge de l'harmonisation mondiale des
normes web - html)
FTP : File Transfer Protocol
KISS : Keep It Stupid Simple ; première règle en matière de programmation : )
b) Examiner le corpus ci-dessous et commenter les formes soulignées. Les énoncés sont
authentiques.
"If you're rofling on the floor" / "I'm totally ROFLing about your kiddie quote for today."
"Don't get googled by hackers!" / "Mary googled for Wikipedia references."
- Au départ, RO(T)FL est un sigle (rolling on the floor laughing) apparu sur les forums, au fur et
à mesure les usagers l'ont utilisé en tant que verbe (donc soumis aux flexions verbales).
- Même remarque pour Google, la popularité du moteur incite les usagers a convertir le nom en
verbe ; la recatégorisation est un phénomène linguistique courant sur le web.
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The Economist - Summer Camp for Coders ; Sep. 15th 2005
c) Trouver les termes anglais correspondants aux éléments fléchés des images ci-dessous.
MONITOR
SCREEN
SPEAKERS
TOWER
THE MOUSEPAD
THE TRACKPAD
Disque dur :
HARD DRIVE
USB PORTS
Le clavier :
KEYBOARD
Les touches :
KEYS
This computer is a...
This computer is a...
DESKTOP COMPUTER
LAPTOP COMPUTER
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