The universities try to give students an experience of what is currently used in the industry. When I started college in 1999, it was Java. Prior to that, C++. However, it's up to you how many languages you want to learn. You can just stick with what they teach you at school, or you can take the initiative and go out learn more. I think it rests with the student.
I knew a BASIC, C, and C++ when I started college. Java was easy to pick up. Over the course of my college career, I taught myself Perl and PHP.
There is a lot of excitement surrounding the human genome, and some naive oversimplifications. Furthermore there are a lot of exaggerations and wild tangents when the media talks about the ramifications of some new genetic discovery.
Many people seem to think that MP is directly proportional to image quality. Not so. The MP is part of the equation, but mostly tells you how big your pictures can be (print sizewise). The real quality lies in the image processing capability, the size of the CCD, and the kind of lens that the camera uses.
One thing I've noticed, well at least the university I went to (Arizona State - ok I've heard all the jibes), is that there is not as much emphasis on coding style as there is in just getting the assignment done. This article is essentially talking about the bad habits that students develop, and mostly this is due to insufficient emphasis on good coding style. I had been writing code for almost five or six years before I started college, so it was second nature to me. However, some of the people I met hadn't written a single line of code in their life. They were genuinely interested in CS (but there were some who were in it just because "CS people make a lot of money"). Most first year programming classes that I know of, just give you to tools to the language without telling you how to use it well. It's like you know English, but does that mean you can write a really good Story, or an Essay that is grammatically correct all the way? No, it takes training - and that is what I think some of these first year classes fail to provide. Sure, later on in your CS/CSE degree you may come across a professor/class that emphasizes good coding style, but by then some of these bad habits may be so ingrained. Like for example, I have seen C programs without ANY indentation. How terrible is that? Whitespace is awesome - use it liberally.
I was lucky enough to have a good professor my first year in college. I rememember that he eschewed the use of "goto's" (ok I have heard enough debates on this). His reason was that many students simply did not know how to use them right, leading to the inevitable spaghetti code. Also since we were using Java, it wasn't possible anyway.
Anyway, my point on Coding Style is that first year classes should emphasize that point so that students can learn to write programs that are easy to debug and document.
Proper Specs, Writing Algorithms, Documentation, and Knowing what your code does
I can't even begin to say how important this is. The major problems (some) Engineers have is that they write terrible comments, or none at all, or cryptic ones. I have come back to code that I wrote months ago and I have had a hard time deciphering what it is that I wrote. Documentation may seem like a pain, but in reality it makes the maintenance of your code more effective. Also, in an industry setting if someone else has to come along and look at your code, it makes it easier for them. How many times have you had to go over someone else's code and found no comments, or terribly obvious ones like:
i++;//increment i
I took an assembly language class in my sophomore year, and another one in my junior year - they were required courses. The prof in the first class was a former student of the prof in the second class, so they had the exact same methods. They had three main emphasis points:
1) Algorithm
2) Program Size
3) Documentation
Both these professors gave our excellent specs on our assignment (something more professors should do). They were extremely detailed and they exactly told us what was expected. In addition to this, they graded on program size and execution time. This prompted (most of) us to create efficient algorithms. I have to say that usually I'd just jump into the code and start coding, with a hazy algorithm in my mind. This time, I really had to sit down and come up with an algorithm. I discovered that it made my coding process much easier. It's better looking at your algorithm in paper and the comparing it to your code than doing it in your head. Their final emphasis was on documentation. 20% of the points for a lab assignment was for documentation. We had to provide an introduction/user's guide for the program. By reading it, any person should know WHAT the program does. Secondly, we had to provide an internal overview. This is esesentially the description of the algorithm that we use. Any person, by reading the internal overview, should have a good idea o
Ok, this really isn't a tech support issue. My friend was staying in this apartment complex where they have centrally controlled AC/Heater. Summer had arrived - it was June in Phoenix, Arizona and so it was pretty hot. For some reason, the apartment complex hadn't turned on the AC yet. When my friend went to the office and asked them why they hadn't turned it on, the lady there gave her a blank look and then after a while said:
"We can't turn on the AC because we have been using the same pipes for heating over winter. The pipes have to cool down before we can turn on the AC".
WTF?! I'm not even sure what that means. The did turn on the AC the next week though. I guess the pipes cooled down.
Great! Another chance for Rick Berman to ruin my memories. The just doesn't get it. Nemesis was alright, in my opinion. But my favourite TNG movie is still "First Contact". Nemesis had a LOT of potential... the story had a lot of potential, I don't know what went wrong. I felt that they should have elaborated a whole lot more on the new Federation-Romulan relationship. I really want to see how that turns out. Gene Rodenberry's dream is dying. I agree. They should let the franchise die for a while. My response to Enterprise has been lukewarm. I follow it, but not with that much enthusiasm.
If they are making a prequel, I think they should make movies on the very first Earth-Romulan War, Q, or DS9.
Or how about something in early federation history (I am not sure if Enterprise will be covering that)?
Even if they make a new movie, who are they going to cast? I think part of the appeal of the movies was that there were a lot of characters that the bulk of the viewers were already familiar with, and had already warmed up to. So I am not sure how successful it would be.
The ports system on FreeBSD, for example, makes it very easy to install programs. However, just a couple of days ago actually, I had uninstalled something that some other installation required. FreeBSD would say that the port was installed, but it wasn't able to find the shared libraries. Even after I tried installing the same port, it wouldn't find the libs. I was able to fix it only after I installed the uninstalled program from source.
Building from packages is easier and it also provides a convenient way to keep track of everything you have installed. Also, you CAN have control over the installation process. In the FreeBSD ports system for example, you can pass flags to the make process. But building from source is sometimes necessary IMHO (like in the situation I ran into).
The other main advantage (at least with FreeBSD ports) is that FreeBSD automatically goes and fetches dependencies for you. If you are building from source, you either have to get all the dependencies beforehand or you will find out what you need while building.
Muhaha! While all of you are sitting here talking about the Power of Sewage, I am secretly developing the Sewage Of Power!! HAHAHA! The world shall be MINE!
About a year ago, I had an interesting conversation with the cab driver who was taking me to the airport. It went like this:
Cabbie: I'm only going to live in Arizona for a year more. After that, I'm going to live in Alaska Me: Oh really? What will you be doing there? Cabbie: I wanna be a Gold Prospector. And I wanna look for fossils. Me: Sounds Interesting. What kind of fossils will you be looking for? Cabbie: Well, anything I can find. But what I really wanna find is a fossil of Big Foot. Me: Oh... I see... Cabbie: Yeah! Those things exist you know! One passed in front of my truck 20 years ago! Me: Wow... must have been... interesting Cabbie: Yeah. Apparently this guy found one up in Alaska but then the Government came and took it away. They government hides that kind of stuff from us. They always do. That and the UFOs Me: Yeah... Totally... Cabbie: Yeah! I know they have UFOs and stuff. You know, Area 51? All those abductions and things like that. They're abducting people. I guess we're like Lab Animals to them. The aliens, you know... Me: Yeah... cool...
At this point I had reached the airport. This happened some time ago, so I guess he's in Alaska looking for Big foot right about now. I wonder how this news affected him...
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"I had lots of spam before. Now I have none! Bayesian Filters saved my life!
John Bismarck"
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I tend to disagree. It all comes down to what you want to do and HOW you want to do it. Quite simply put, some things are better done using a functional language, while others are done better with procedural language.
After all, they are just different ways of approaching a problem. A functional language may not necessarily be "easier to read" - that is a relative term. Also, the concept of a procedural language is easier to understand than the concept of a functional one. A functional language like LISP is as much a mathematical system as it is a programming language. And most people find procedure easier to understand that mathematical systems.
It's ok! I know what it says:
I am the Robot. You are such a friend to make me happy. Please to make me happy then I sing and dance for your fine evening. Please enjoy me.
Slashdot Mirror
The strictness imposed by Pascal and its decendents really forces you to think carefully about what it is you're trying to code
True, but if you really want to know what a strick language is, try ADA.
The universities try to give students an experience of what is currently used in the industry. When I started college in 1999, it was Java. Prior to that, C++. However, it's up to you how many languages you want to learn. You can just stick with what they teach you at school, or you can take the initiative and go out learn more. I think it rests with the student. I knew a BASIC, C, and C++ when I started college. Java was easy to pick up. Over the course of my college career, I taught myself Perl and PHP.
There is a lot of excitement surrounding the human genome, and some naive oversimplifications. Furthermore there are a lot of exaggerations and wild tangents when the media talks about the ramifications of some new genetic discovery.
I recommend reading It Ain't Necessarily So : The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions by Richard Lewontin.
He puts all of it in perspective.
Many people seem to think that MP is directly proportional to image quality. Not so. The MP is part of the equation, but mostly tells you how big your pictures can be (print sizewise). The real quality lies in the image processing capability, the size of the CCD, and the kind of lens that the camera uses.
More information here.
Has netcraft confirmed it is better?
I work in Phoenix. We are so damn productive. We have 0% error. But we lost a bunch of people due to dehydration and heat stroke.
Vildkatten: u just got fragged
BigGunz: omg ur the gamer gilr lol
Vildkatten:yes. do u want a rematch?
BigGunz: lol ur hot lol do u wnat ot cyber lol
*** Vildkatten has left the game
You keep getting passed by that commie nutjob in the the veedub running Linux, despite Ballmer insisting you should have more power
No! No! No! The guys running Linux will be in Tanks (In the Beginning Was the Commandline by Neal Stephenson).
Coding Style
//increment i
One thing I've noticed, well at least the university I went to (Arizona State - ok I've heard all the jibes), is that there is not as much emphasis on coding style as there is in just getting the assignment done. This article is essentially talking about the bad habits that students develop, and mostly this is due to insufficient emphasis on good coding style. I had been writing code for almost five or six years before I started college, so it was second nature to me. However, some of the people I met hadn't written a single line of code in their life. They were genuinely interested in CS (but there were some who were in it just because "CS people make a lot of money"). Most first year programming classes that I know of, just give you to tools to the language without telling you how to use it well. It's like you know English, but does that mean you can write a really good Story, or an Essay that is grammatically correct all the way? No, it takes training - and that is what I think some of these first year classes fail to provide. Sure, later on in your CS/CSE degree you may come across a professor/class that emphasizes good coding style, but by then some of these bad habits may be so ingrained. Like for example, I have seen C programs without ANY indentation. How terrible is that? Whitespace is awesome - use it liberally.
I was lucky enough to have a good professor my first year in college. I rememember that he eschewed the use of "goto's" (ok I have heard enough debates on this). His reason was that many students simply did not know how to use them right, leading to the inevitable spaghetti code. Also since we were using Java, it wasn't possible anyway.
Anyway, my point on Coding Style is that first year classes should emphasize that point so that students can learn to write programs that are easy to debug and document.
Proper Specs, Writing Algorithms, Documentation, and Knowing what your code does
I can't even begin to say how important this is. The major problems (some) Engineers have is that they write terrible comments, or none at all, or cryptic ones. I have come back to code that I wrote months ago and I have had a hard time deciphering what it is that I wrote. Documentation may seem like a pain, but in reality it makes the maintenance of your code more effective. Also, in an industry setting if someone else has to come along and look at your code, it makes it easier for them. How many times have you had to go over someone else's code and found no comments, or terribly obvious ones like:
i++;
I took an assembly language class in my sophomore year, and another one in my junior year - they were required courses. The prof in the first class was a former student of the prof in the second class, so they had the exact same methods. They had three main emphasis points:
1) Algorithm
2) Program Size
3) Documentation
Both these professors gave our excellent specs on our assignment (something more professors should do). They were extremely detailed and they exactly told us what was expected. In addition to this, they graded on program size and execution time. This prompted (most of) us to create efficient algorithms. I have to say that usually I'd just jump into the code and start coding, with a hazy algorithm in my mind. This time, I really had to sit down and come up with an algorithm. I discovered that it made my coding process much easier. It's better looking at your algorithm in paper and the comparing it to your code than doing it in your head. Their final emphasis was on documentation. 20% of the points for a lab assignment was for documentation. We had to provide an introduction/user's guide for the program. By reading it, any person should know WHAT the program does. Secondly, we had to provide an internal overview. This is esesentially the description of the algorithm that we use. Any person, by reading the internal overview, should have a good idea o
Ok, this really isn't a tech support issue. My friend was staying in this apartment complex where they have centrally controlled AC/Heater. Summer had arrived - it was June in Phoenix, Arizona and so it was pretty hot. For some reason, the apartment complex hadn't turned on the AC yet. When my friend went to the office and asked them why they hadn't turned it on, the lady there gave her a blank look and then after a while said: "We can't turn on the AC because we have been using the same pipes for heating over winter. The pipes have to cool down before we can turn on the AC". WTF?! I'm not even sure what that means. The did turn on the AC the next week though. I guess the pipes cooled down.
Roses are red, Violets are blue. I am schizophrenic, and so am I.
Perl is Write Once, Read Never ;)
I try to make my Perl code look pretty though.
Great! Another chance for Rick Berman to ruin my memories. The just doesn't get it. Nemesis was alright, in my opinion. But my favourite TNG movie is still "First Contact". Nemesis had a LOT of potential... the story had a lot of potential, I don't know what went wrong. I felt that they should have elaborated a whole lot more on the new Federation-Romulan relationship. I really want to see how that turns out. Gene Rodenberry's dream is dying. I agree. They should let the franchise die for a while. My response to Enterprise has been lukewarm. I follow it, but not with that much enthusiasm.
If they are making a prequel, I think they should make movies on the very first Earth-Romulan War, Q, or DS9.
Or how about something in early federation history (I am not sure if Enterprise will be covering that)?
Even if they make a new movie, who are they going to cast? I think part of the appeal of the movies was that there were a lot of characters that the bulk of the viewers were already familiar with, and had already warmed up to. So I am not sure how successful it would be.
The ports system on FreeBSD, for example, makes it very easy to install programs. However, just a couple of days ago actually, I had uninstalled something that some other installation required. FreeBSD would say that the port was installed, but it wasn't able to find the shared libraries. Even after I tried installing the same port, it wouldn't find the libs. I was able to fix it only after I installed the uninstalled program from source.
Building from packages is easier and it also provides a convenient way to keep track of everything you have installed. Also, you CAN have control over the installation process. In the FreeBSD ports system for example, you can pass flags to the make process. But building from source is sometimes necessary IMHO (like in the situation I ran into).
The other main advantage (at least with FreeBSD ports) is that FreeBSD automatically goes and fetches dependencies for you. If you are building from source, you either have to get all the dependencies beforehand or you will find out what you need while building.
What will they think of next?
It doesn't contain that paper clip guy that we've all come to adore!
OO.o really needs clippy if it needs to be feature complete!
Man, the monolith is not going to like this.
What?! Are you telling me my 9 dollar bill is not real?
The RX-8 Transformer
"His physical prowess and confident attitude ensure his place at the forefront in the battle against evil and second rate automobiles"
What do the autobots think second-rate automobiles are?
Muhaha! While all of you are sitting here talking about the Power of Sewage, I am secretly developing the Sewage Of Power!! HAHAHA! The world shall be MINE!
About a year ago, I had an interesting conversation with the cab driver who was taking me to the airport. It went like this:
Cabbie: I'm only going to live in Arizona for a year more. After that, I'm going to live in Alaska
Me: Oh really? What will you be doing there?
Cabbie: I wanna be a Gold Prospector. And I wanna look for fossils.
Me: Sounds Interesting. What kind of fossils will you be looking for?
Cabbie: Well, anything I can find. But what I really wanna find is a fossil of Big Foot.
Me: Oh... I see...
Cabbie: Yeah! Those things exist you know! One passed in front of my truck 20 years ago!
Me: Wow... must have been... interesting
Cabbie: Yeah. Apparently this guy found one up in Alaska but then the Government came and took it away. They government hides that kind of stuff from us. They always do. That and the UFOs
Me: Yeah... Totally...
Cabbie: Yeah! I know they have UFOs and stuff. You know, Area 51? All those abductions and things like that. They're abducting people. I guess we're like Lab Animals to them. The aliens, you know...
Me: Yeah... cool...
At this point I had reached the airport. This happened some time ago, so I guess he's in Alaska looking for Big foot right about now. I wonder how this news affected him...
I know certain people who never benefited from that mutation. I used to work with them!!
New bAyEsIAN sPAm FilTER just for you!!1!! is your inboX filled with spAM? Lose it all nOw!! this revoluTIonAry new spam fiLTErs w1LL st0p yoU from rEceIving spam EVER AGAIN! GET IT NOW!!
"I had lots of spam before. Now I have none! Bayesian Filters saved my life!
John Bismarck"
oierfj.w91i swoerks ms catatonic concinnity arms shipment to fireworks moon salt
I tend to disagree. It all comes down to what you want to do and HOW you want to do it. Quite simply put, some things are better done using a functional language, while others are done better with procedural language.
After all, they are just different ways of approaching a problem. A functional language may not necessarily be "easier to read" - that is a relative term. Also, the concept of a procedural language is easier to understand than the concept of a functional one. A functional language like LISP is as much a mathematical system as it is a programming language. And most people find procedure easier to understand that mathematical systems.
It's ok! I know what it says: I am the Robot. You are such a friend to make me happy. Please to make me happy then I sing and dance for your fine evening. Please enjoy me.