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Programming Assignment Guide For CS Students
kennelbound writes "For those students just getting started in a Computer Science degree or a career in software development, this guide has been written to help you understand what NOT to do when coding a project. Those with a little more experience should still read it to get a good chuckle (and hopefully the mistakes stated within will not seem too familiar!)"
I'm sure many people will say this, but you learn much more from making mistakes and working out the problems than by reading a book on common mistakes.
a HUGE thing is not to plagarize code. I was a TA for CS101 at my school, and plagarism is not only rampant, but really really easily detectable. besides, you don't learn anything; although, as one of my professors said, "if you can copy someone else's code and alter it so I can't tell, you may as well have actually done the assignment."
So let me get this straight, you didn't get that the article was a work of satire, yet this is the only part of it you felt needed to be challenged?
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Do not slack at your math. You will repeat it. It often takes time. It is very important. Learn to utilize math and make it one of your more powerful tools.
Do not cheat on code assignments. Once again, it may take time but you need it. Messing up and looking through code more than writing it is what really makes you good.
Take hard CS classes. Take advantage of rare courses your school may offer in CS. Take tough classes like compilers or computational geometry. Make sure you take some diverse classes but also try and focus on something a bit that you enjoy.
Take more math. This is a skill that can really differentiate you from other programmers in the industry, If you have good math skills, you can get good paying, secure jobs in fields like computer graphics, physics, medical and other science fields that demand proficient math skills. It will also change the way you think if you really take it seriously and understand that much of the early math is indeed lame, but necessary to understand useful math that you will eventually learn.
Take other classes, like art. You can learn a lot from these things and apply them to what you are doing. Knowing about various things will come in handy at some point.
Learn more than what your school will teach you. It is up to you to read about things in the field, both theory and practical. Learn languages not needed in your school. Play around with things. Put together a cheap Linux computer at home and play around in it if you haven't already. You are interested in this anyways, so this shouldn't be something you have to do.
Maybe CS is not for you. The future is not guaranteed in this field as far as job security is concerned. You may spend a lot of time taking hard classes only to have to end up doing something else. You may not even make it through the program. Personally, I think there will always be a need for well educated, creative, smart people. The analytic skills you can learn will do more for you than anything else. Pay attention.
If you love it and are good at it and really spend the time in school to really learn this art, you could enjoy a career working in an industry you love. If you are ambitious, there will be many trails to be blazed in the future in this young, ever changing field. It's not about "computers". It's about computation, a modern subset of math that we can abstract in electronics. The possibilities are endless and you may invent the next big thing.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I've got to disagree - for beginning CS students, compiling frequently is an excellent thing to do. I'm a CS TA, and most of the panicky emails I get from students the night before a project is due revolve around small, simple problems that get blown way out of proportion. A single misplaced semicolon can make the compiler spit out dozens of errors for lines of code below it, none of which will make any sense. Errors propogated through code are terribly difficult to detect; your program's output might be incorrect due to something that you wrote two class files ago and have already forgotten about. And then there's the problem of poor program planning combined with infrequent test compilations - namely, the design sucks donkey balls and you just spent three hours laying down the foundation for a code base that is completely useless. I wrote code like this until I because a grad student, and it shows - I spend way less time designing and write far better programs due to multiple test compilations.
While some thought is, of course, necessary I have definitely seen the problem with new programming students of thinking too much.
Basically, they try to understand the whole problem fully before writing the first line of java or C. My feeling is that this is not possible for a new student. There is just too much. Rather you just have to write code at some point. Forcing yourself to try things in code is often the only way to really get started in your first programming language. (After the first one, you should be able to think as much as you want because you should have enough background not to get lost).
I have actually noticed this problem more in girl then guys. Guys tend to rush right in and try to hack it while girls try to understand it fully first. Sometimes the hacking approach is just the necessary one. (Of course this then flips in the second or third CS course where NOT fully thinking through the problem hurts more).
As of tomorrow I will have done 5 assignments in C++ this year. For 4 of those assignments I didn't have a compiler at my home (our program had to compile in Turbo C++, you could tell who used different compilers at home). Instead I had to go to school to debug my programs, so what I did was I'd write out my code at home in a day, go to school and then spend a few days debugging it. For 1 of my assignments (my last one) I had a compiler at home so I could debug as I go. Guess which assignment I actually enjoyed. That's right, the last one. Not knowing if my code will work makes coding unfulfilling. Spending days debugging is tedious and stressful. This just sounds plain lazy. Your code should (with as minimal effort as possible) always be compilable. If you've got a menu that calls 5 modules, write stubs for the modules. Utilise flags. This allows you to compile as you go along. Actually it's closer to "create 100 errors get 10000 error messages, try to sieve through all the messages to find the correct 100." Whereas it's much easier to go through 10 error messages to find the correct 1. You'll notice you tend to get the same 9 error messages each time, whereas having 1000 makes it a lot more difficult. And this is just syntax errors. We're not even talking about logical errors (and yes, there will be some, no-one's perfect). Actually you won't be implementing anything. You haven't implemented it until it's working. And focusing on the higher picture should be done in the PLANNING STAGE. NOT the CODING STAGE. Ideally you shouldn't even be on a computer when writing the algorithm (which is where you focus on the higher picture). You should have a pencil, a rubber and lots of pieces of paper. But even if you are on the computer it should be done in Pseudocode. I bow before your intelligence, for you can write code without debugging it at all and only have "a couple of errors." You must truly be a coding genius. That or you're talking out you're ass. I haven't met anyone who can do what you just described. Not any students and not any teachers. Either you write simple code or you're a liar and/or a troll. Because the chances of that being true is (IMO) very small.