[Tfug] Cheap Memory = Lardy Men = UofA Comp Sci Program

[Jeffry Johnston]

Yeah.. I actually learned most of my good coding habits BEFORE I even got to
college.  Write enough programs on your own and eventually you start to
realize what code sucks and what code doesn't.  I even learned structured
coding with Basic, for crying out loud.  When a program gets big and
complicated enough, if the code is bad the project eventually aborts
itself.  Natural selection, or perhaps just self awareness?  Programming is
something I enjoy doing, though. Plenty (most) of the other students just
did their assignments, and that's it.  The rest of their time was partying,
dating, hanging out, etc.  On group projects I tried to work with the ones
that enjoying coding, because invariably I'd learn things from them.

But, I did learn some things at Pima CC.  Had good Java and data structures
classes there, because the instructors actually cared.  U of A was pretty
much a waste of time (and money, but not that much.. good thing I qualified
for financial aid!).  My favorite class at the U of A was compilers with
Debray.  My best experience was working on the Stork project in Python at an
undergrad researcher.  Got to teach myself a new language, started running
Ubuntu, and I still use Python to this day.

The U of A kept talking about wanting to teach theory and concepts.. not
languages.  I took C# and C++ at the U of A, but they hardly wanted to even
count it towards the major.  Pretty lame.  Most of the professors didn't
care about teaching, just about getting grants, etc.

Of course, when you are trying to get a job, the U of A is wonderful, right?
;)  You just leave off the fact that you were a good coder before you even
went to college.

Jeff


On Dec 21, 2007 9:56 PM, Bowie J. Poag <bpoag at comcast.net> wrote:

>
> void myOpinion (void)
> {
>
> // I'm not the best coder in the world. Yeah, I know, unbelievable. :)
> But here's my $0.02, as someone who has to do it for a living:
>
> I would agree... When I attended U of A about 7-8 years ago, their Comp
> Sci program was kind of lame. I felt at the time that it didn't go very
> far toward preparing students for real-world coding. In retrospect, I
> was right.. They didn't prepare us for real-world coding, nor did they
> emphasize good coding habits, or even begin to teach topics such as
> what's good coding philosophy, what open source is, everything that
> everyone knew was going to be commonplace in the future. They touched on
> none of it. It was more like "Oh, it runs? Great! A+ for you. Next?"  I
> would have preferred it be something more along the lines of "Oh, it
> works? Great. You get a D+. Now go make your RPN calculator applet
> lightweight, so it doesn't require 39MB to run on this machine. If you
> can do it in a memory footprint of less than (x) and still keep it
> readable, you get an A."
>
> /* Speculation:  I think their biggest problem can be boiled down to one
> word: Java. Like alot of other Universities with their dick stuck in Sun
> Microsystem's mousetrap, they were slowly talked into folding Java into
> their curriculum... eventually, enough pillow talk got them to ditch C
> and shape their entire curriculum around it.  They bet the farm on the
> industry moving toward OO, and in particular, Java. */
>
> Simple procedural programming is still the dominant method of getting
> stuff done, not OO.. For most things, OO is exactly what it appears to
> be. Unnecessary, time-consuming, slow, bloaty overkill. My time as a
> student would have been better spent learning how to be a better
> procedural coder, and THEN open the door to OO concepts later. I mean,
> what good is it learn how to carry around an OO-centric 300 pound Swiss
> Army Knife with 117 different attachments (of which you'll only use
> maybe 2), when all you really need is common sense?  Ditch the knife and
> use your head, for cryin' out loud. Don't teach me WHAT to think--Teach
> me HOW to think. How do I make my code fast AND readable? How do I
> collaborate with others?  How can I be more strategic in my approach to
> problem solving? What does it mean to write truly portable, streamlined,
> orthogonal code? How do I maintain my code over it's lifespan? I got
> none of that at UofA, sadly.
>
> Ugh... and to make matters still worse, UofA relegated assembly language
> to the CE track, and away from CS, which in my book, is criminal. Sad,
> and criminal. Worse, they tried to line up SML/NJ in it's place, like it
> taught the same concepts.. good lord..
>
> vomit(UofA);
>
> exit();
>
> }
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Jude Nelson wrote:
> > I agree--coders should be forced to learn on low, low-end hardware
> > (even if only in a VM) and earn the privilage of using faster, better
> > systems.  That's how I learned--I started Basic and asssembler on a
> > TI-83+ graphing calculator (23k RAM, 16 MHz Zilog z80 [8-bit], 1.5 MB
> > flash ROM), and moved to C on a TI-89 graphing calculator (191k RAM,
> > 12 MHz Motorola 68k processor, 300k flash ROM, 32k code segments [the
> > 68k has a 16-bit data bus but was 32-bit internally]), and moved to
> > Palm OS devices (wow!  a whole megabyte of heap space!), and then
> > finally to PCs.
> >
> > And how does the U of A teach CS students to code?  With a 16 GB
> > quad-core 64-bit server, with Java 5 of course!  Seriously, how do you
> > even *use* that much horsepower?  My dual-core laptop with 2 GB RAM is
> > only justified in that I need to be able to do my homework off-line
> > (oh, and show Compiz Fusion to those foolish enough to think Vi$ta is
> > the Second Coming).
> >
> > Regards,
> > Jude Nelson
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tucson Free Unix Group - tfug at tfug.org
> Subscription Options:
> http://www.tfug.org/mailman/listinfo/tfug_tfug.org
>