Preparation for Co-Op

[Roman]

Hey everyone.

As an extension to my "Learning to program" question, I've been thinking about co-op these past few days. For students who have basically no pre-university programming experience, what is a better way to arm ourselves with sufficient tools for a "good" co-op position in the summer?

I'm devoting some time to expand my knowledge of Dr. Scheme to help me in learning some programming concepts and helping me with later assignments, but would I be better off trying to simultaneously learn another language (such as Python, which I've already looked into)? Learning about programming through Dr. Scheme would certainly allow me to concentrate on concepts rather than languages, but is that a good thing when it comes to applying for co-op? It's not even about the money. I want an intellectually-challenging position, and I'm afraid that with the repertoire I'll develop in CS 135 and 136 I won't be able to compete for those positions without some sort of extra-curricular involvement. I am very interested, just not sure which way to direct my "interest energy" ^^

-RZ

[Tony]

All I can say is that it really depends on what the company is hiring for, and who is doing the hiring.

Sometimes a company will recognize that you have the ability to pick up on their tools. Other times it doesn't matter, and I got to choose my own tools for a self-contained project.

Large corporations with HR departments might not know what they are doing, demand years of experience (! from students? seriously?) of on-paper buzz words, and then stick you doing QA anyway.

[nike52]

This should help http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=2309eb0e628c5793ce868d49988a6f94&t=574205/. If you want an intellectually challenging position, consider going into games programming. It's very difficult, though.

[wtd]

Ability to learn is more important than any particular knowledge. If learning another language helps with that go for it.

[Roman]

Is DrScheme used outside of educational institutions (I'm really not up-to-date on the programming world)? I heard it's a largely educational language. Having no experience in the industry, I end up relying on rumors -_- I'll have to look it up...

The ability to learn is indeed important. And I guess the best way to develop it is to.. well.. learn.

[wtd]

Scheme as a language is predominantly used in academia. Academia can be a way to make money, though when you consider that programming language theory is a business like any other. Think Microsoft Research, or Apple's investment in LLVM as just a couple of examples.

DrScheme is almost certainly used only as an educational tool.

[Roman]

Hmm... I'm thinking I'll keep learning Scheme/DrScheme as the curriculum demands, but program in Python on my own time. At this point I'm further ahead by quite a bit in Python, so I'm relatively comfortable with it. And I'll apply the programing concepts that I learn in Scheme to Python (or try to...) and vice-versa.

Plus, the styles of the languages are different (i think... ) so it should help me look at problems from different angles And games programming certainly is something I'm thinking about. In fact, I'm going to the Blue Castle Games Information session tomorrow to learn some background info from real developers

[wtd]

I would comment that from my own perspective, that after dabbling in several other languages, using the Python interactive interpreter to write quick, otherwise useless pieces of code let me get a grasp on object-oriented programming: how classes work, how instances work, etc.

Object-orientation isn't the end-all and be-all of programming, but it's important to understand from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Python can certainly help with the latter, and the latter is key to sticking with it to understand the former.

[Roman]

I like Python for it's easy syntax, but I can't find a way to effectively use the interpreter. When I use it, it's usually within a "large" (by my standards) project to follow and test various trains of thoughts. But I could never use it directly for any sort of purpose... although all that is in my limited 4-weeks experience of programming.

Understanding is very important, but there's so much to understand x_x But, as they say, there are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going. And the practical aspect is fun =) I haven't dabbled in theory as much yet, though I certainly want to. Now I'm rambling, so I'll stop.

Thanks for the advice. I'll try to build up my Python skills and Scheme skills simultaneously. CS 136 does C I think, but I'll stay away from that from now. Maybe in the summer... about 7.5 months left until co-op, so I better get programming.

-RZ

[bugzpodder]

im pretty sure cs136 doesn't do C. and other ppl is right, let the company prepare you

[Roman]

They do some C, but mostly Scheme. In the words of the prof, we'll do a little C to see how the two compare. But the focus will remain on scheme.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

CS 136 introduces C a few weeks in, and continues with both Scheme and C to the end of the course. Later assignments are predominantly, but not exclusively, using C.

DrScheme is used by some people and some companies for development in Scheme (often for internal use, because clients want "name" languages), but very few compared to Python, Perl, etc. Still, what you learn about development using DrScheme can translate over to using other IDEs, just as what you learn about development using Scheme can translate over to using other languages. --PR