Whenever I'm coding something complex (generally some of the inner workings of a tile-based game or a series of SQL statements) and get stuck, I will work on it for days, and then one day I will simply wake up in the morning and have the answer. It's quite amusing...
If you bothered to search for baskin robbins ice cream (notice that it's "baskin" not "basking") then www.baskinrobbins.com is the first item on the list. Please be more thorough next time...
I completely agree with jCaT, you need to teach them some real programming first. The main things being how to write a queue, a linked list, and multiple sorting algorithms. Let this (and teaching them basic C++) be the first one or two marking periods. Then give them a nice text-based RPG. Not one where you type in commands, but more like Zelda, only the walls are 0's and the character is an X, etc. Like rogue or nethack (I think these were like this). A game like this will teach them many cool things, like devising an efficient way to store the map. It forces them to load the map dynamically (everytime you walk off the edge of the screen it loads the next piece of the map), etc. That would take half a marking period. Then, for the remainder you either teach them DirectX and let them create a graphical game, or teach them basic DOS game programming, or attempt to teach something like BDirectWindow in BeOS for gaming. A great (and logical) game to have them make would be a Zelda clone because they already wrote a text-only version of Zelda. This way they get to re-write their code in a better fashion and add some cool graphics. This is what I'd do if I taught comp-sci to talented students (you need to fail the students that just screw around in class or this would be a disaster, a course like this would be very fast-paced).
Anyway, that's what I would suggest for a comp-sci course. I'm a big fan of the Zelda clones because they are so simple to teach and can be done with almost any programming language. (So far, in my programming, I have done text versions in QBASIC and C, and graphical versions in QBASIC, C, and Visual BASIC.)
Has anyone stopped to think that it's a really good thing that Microsoft uses a Microsoft server platform for all of their servers whether or not it's the right tool for the job? If you think about it, what better way is there to improve your OS than to start using it on a large scale. Microsoft is smart enough to realize that, if they want people to use Win2k for e-mail servers, they should use it for an e-mail server as well. That way, in making it a great e-mail server for themselves, everyone else benefits because MS will be making their product that much better for that task. MS has the right approach here, IMHO.
Just for the record, I would not mind seeing MS use more of Linux because they can definately learn some things from Unix-derived OSes (like Linux and *BSD and Unix itself).
what good things do you see Microsoft, record labels, publishers etc doing that others are not?
Microsoft brings a lot of software to the average consumer. Most users would not be able to handle something like Linux, it's too complex (I'm specifically thinking of my parents, I just taught my mom how to reboot Windows a week ago...).
Record labels allow those people with relatively slow 'Net connections (me and my 56k modem...) to easily purchase music. They also can work wonders for marketing. If a record label already has a deal with several major stores (Best Buy and all of the CD retail stores in the malls) then they can get the artists music out to a lot of people.
What's bad is that the record labels take a huge chunk of cash from the artists and Microsoft tries to run other companies out of business or buy them up. I really like a lot of MS products (Visual Studio, Win2k, Office and Age of Empires I and II) but that doesn't mean I always agree with them.
With all that said, we do not need to take on "Big Publishing" or anything like that, we just need to get them to give the real talent (the authors, musicians, artists, etc.) what they deserve. If this mean boycotting them for a while (effectively what King is doing) then so be it. Whatever gets the point across that they're screwing over the people that create something useful.
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Whenever I'm coding something complex (generally some of the inner workings of a tile-based game or a series of SQL statements) and get stuck, I will work on it for days, and then one day I will simply wake up in the morning and have the answer. It's quite amusing...
- Alex Morris
If you bothered to search for baskin robbins ice cream (notice that it's "baskin" not "basking") then www.baskinrobbins.com is the first item on the list. Please be more thorough next time...
- Alex
Anyway, that's what I would suggest for a comp-sci course. I'm a big fan of the Zelda clones because they are so simple to teach and can be done with almost any programming language. (So far, in my programming, I have done text versions in QBASIC and C, and graphical versions in QBASIC, C, and Visual BASIC.)
Good luck,
Alex
Just for the record, I would not mind seeing MS use more of Linux because they can definately learn some things from Unix-derived OSes (like Linux and *BSD and Unix itself).
- Alex
what good things do you see Microsoft, record labels, publishers etc doing that others are not?
Microsoft brings a lot of software to the average consumer. Most users would not be able to handle something like Linux, it's too complex (I'm specifically thinking of my parents, I just taught my mom how to reboot Windows a week ago...).
Record labels allow those people with relatively slow 'Net connections (me and my 56k modem...) to easily purchase music. They also can work wonders for marketing. If a record label already has a deal with several major stores (Best Buy and all of the CD retail stores in the malls) then they can get the artists music out to a lot of people.
What's bad is that the record labels take a huge chunk of cash from the artists and Microsoft tries to run other companies out of business or buy them up. I really like a lot of MS products (Visual Studio, Win2k, Office and Age of Empires I and II) but that doesn't mean I always agree with them.
With all that said, we do not need to take on "Big Publishing" or anything like that, we just need to get them to give the real talent (the authors, musicians, artists, etc.) what they deserve. If this mean boycotting them for a while (effectively what King is doing) then so be it. Whatever gets the point across that they're screwing over the people that create something useful.
'Nuff mindless rambling...
- Alex
Many of these changes were made in the past couple weeks at the big meeting they held. That's why a lot of the features are new or re-designed.