so sad

[Velocity]

so sad, in grade 10 they just introduce us to bulletproofing the program.

[SNIPERDUDE]

It seems time changes nothing -- the best way to learn anything (including programming) is through practice in your own time, the school system is pretty useless at times.

[Insectoid]

So introduce yourself to everything class didn't teach you. Grade 10 compsci exists only to find the students that like to program, because most people have no idea if they'll like programming or are any good at it until they try it, because they literally know nothing at all about it. The class has to move slowly for all the students who tried it, only to discover that they hate it or aren't that great. Thus, it sucks for those who are good at and/or enjoy it.

11th grade compsci will also probably disappoint you. Hell, even university classes at my school are a bit slow. Class for me, is more of a road sign that says "This stuff is important" or "This thing you didn't know about and never would have looked up yourself exists, now go back to sleep and learn about it when you're not in class". Wikipedia/Google are generally better than my teachers anyway.

EDIT: SNIPERDUDE beat me.

[ProgrammingFun]

At my school, real compsci starts in Grade 12, when we do first year university level stuff.

[Raknarg]

What is bulletproof programming exactly?

[Insectoid]

A bulletproof program is a program that the user cannot crash short of manually editing RAM. If you prompt for an integer, and the user enters a character, and your program crashes, then your program isn't bulletproof. If, instead of crashing, your program output "Hey, that's not an integer!", that's bullet-proofing it.

[SNIPERDUDE]

I always got great grades in highschool comp sci not because my programs were the flashiest or the most complex to make, but because I took the time to bulletproof them and made sure they were well constructed.

You get better and more efficient with time, but the effort has to be made and encouraged. Bulletproofing should be taught.

[ProgrammingFun]

We were taught to bulletproof, in fact, my teacher tried every possible error and deducted marks if the program wasn't bulletproofed.

[DemonWasp]

"Bullet-proofing", as this thread calls it, is actually a more complicated subject that you might think. The idea of a "bullet-proof" program, as discussed here, is that of a program which rejects invalid inputs. Although a large component, that's hardly enough: your program must also perform the correct computations for all valid inputs. Often, additional constraints are added: you have to do it in X time, or you must prove that the output is correct for every accepted input.

Depending on requirements, some software is expected to continue operating in the face of sudden hardware failure (modern operating systems do not crash if you remove USB devices, and some don't crash even if all of their mounted disks explode). It is not inconceivable that a program could route around damaged RAM, or use parallel computers to discard results from damaged hardware, or handle its various nodes going up and down -- or in and out of communication -- at random (see also: parallel computation).

Still, the basic idea of rejecting all invalid inputs is difficult in practice. Many of the security patches issued by all major software vendors read like: "fix for possible buffer overrun issue in derp.c" or "fixed a bug where a given (valid) input caused an infinite loop".

So, yes, you were just introduced to bulletproofing a program. But that's all: an introduction. The rabbit-hole goes a LOT deeper, if you keep reading...

[hamid14]

teacher at my school said "always assume that the user will input valid stuff", but i add bulletproofing anyways lol. its really easy to get good marks since you barely learn anything. i hope getting easy marks in university is as easy as this

[Tony]

hamid14 @ Thu Dec 22, 2011 3:43 pm wrote:

"always assume that the user will input valid stuff"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow

hamid14 @ Thu Dec 22, 2011 3:43 pm wrote:

i hope getting easy marks in university is as easy as this

Why would you hope for this? That sounds like a colossal waste of time and money.

[huskiesgoaler34]

Velocity @ Thu Nov 24, 2011 11:26 am wrote:

so sad, in grade 10 they just introduce us to bulletproofing the program.

When I was in grade 10 CS, all my teacher really emphasized was error/bullet proofing. Efficiency and the actual "programming style" was not the focus. As long as your program wouldn't crash, you were guaranteed a 90. It was really weird actually, looking back. I changed schools and took Grade 11 CS and the teacher actual knew that sure error proofing is neccessary but shouldn't be the complete emphasis of programming.

SNIPERDUDE wrote:

It seems time changes nothing -- the best way to learn anything (including programming) is through practice in your own time, the school system is pretty useless at times.

1000% accurate. But I have to admit, the school that I go to now has two great computer teachers who actually know what they are talking about. Having great teachers definitely helps you in the
long run.