Bitching about the curriculum

[Martin]

When you get into university, you realize that you learned important things in a lot of the 'secondary' courses in highschool. Unfortunately, you also realize that these things are things that you could have taught yourself in about an hour.

[wtd]

martin wrote:

When you get into university, you realize that you learned important things in a lot of the 'secondary' courses in highschool. Unfortunately, you also realize that these things are things that you could have taught yourself in about an hour.

As with many things, it ends up being the experience that's the most valuable.

If only in teaching you what not to do.

[Hikaru79]

KC 40oz wrote:

Oh, i assumed it was greek.
Sounds greek
Is there a CompSci.ca irc server/channel?

There is now!! Please come, it's too empty atm ;_;

Info is in my sig =) And Coustos' sig, come to think of it.

[md]

Most of the time i spent in my programming classes (ITT something, and ICS whatever) I spent teaching myself how to do things that interested me. About once a week I'd get an assignment (which i'd do in about 10 minutes), but it was really teaching myself stuff that made the classes great. That and having a competent teacher who actually worked in the industry before teaching...

Anyway my advise to anyone taking programming is to be glad that you have such a good chance to teach yourself stuff, just think it could be worse... you could be taking gym

Besides, from what I gather everyone here programs on PCs. When I did programming I was taught pascal (a very nice language) on a PowerPC (mac). Unfortunatly my school was too cheap to get a good dev enviroment nad compiler so we got to compile to 68000 code, which was then interpreted by the computer IN SOFTWARE. Needless to say, 3D rendering was VERY slow...

[wtd]

Cornflake wrote:

Besides, from what I gather everyone here programs on PCs.

A majority do use Windows, and many of others are Linux users.

However, today is very different from then. Open source has resulted in widespread availability of good compilers and interpreters.

[templest]

My CompSci teacher play Counter-Strike and Quake. C'mon, that's awsome.

[md]

wtd wrote:

However, today is very different from then. Open source has resulted in widespread availability of good compilers and interpreters.

Most schools wont use open source software unless they can get someone to provide support for it. I tried for two years to try to get my school to teach programming in C++ or even pascal, so long as it was on a PC, and they wouldn't because it was to expensive to get a site licence for MSVC or Borland, and they coudn't get support for any of the free compilers.

Maybe you guys have had better experiences, but from mine I'd say that just cause it's free doesn't mean schools will use it.

[Mr. Glib]

templest wrote:

My CompSci teacher play Counter-Strike and Quake. C'mon, that's awsome.

Really? Shouldn't he be spending every waking moment breathing, sleeping, eating curriculum?

[wtd]

Cornflake wrote:

wtd wrote:

However, today is very different from then. Open source has resulted in widespread availability of good compilers and interpreters.

Most schools wont use open source software unless they can get someone to provide support for it. I tried for two years to try to get my school to teach programming in C++ or even pascal, so long as it was on a PC, and they wouldn't because it was to expensive to get a site licence for MSVC or Borland, and they coudn't get support for any of the free compilers.

Maybe you guys have had better experiences, but from mine I'd say that just cause it's free doesn't mean schools will use it.

Perhaps not, though the problem in that case might very well have been a lack of standards in either of those two languages. Schools often don't like teaching languages if they think what they're teaching will soon be irrelevant.

In either case, the presence of good open-source compilers, and information online means you can teach yourself.

[md]

Erm... what lack of standards... C++, and pascal both have strong standards, and are certainly not soon to be irrelavent...

FYI MSVC = Microsoft Visual C++, Borland = Borland C++

[wtd]

Cornflake wrote:

Erm... what lack of standards... C++, and pascal both have strong standards, and are certainly not soon to be irrelavent...

Yes, but those standards are still relatively new, and are not necessarily well implemented by many compiers. Both of the compilers you mentioend are not strong on standards compliance.

[md]

Not to get off topic but...

The reason the school didn't buy MSVC or Borland was because it would have cost too much (so the school claimed), and the school wouldn't use an open source compiler because of the lack of professional support for the open source compilers. The schools problem was NOT with the languages (as they were using pascal) it was with the lack of PROFESSIONAL (as in they pay for it) support.

Anyway my point was not about the development enviroments themselves, but the lack of support for free ones, and schools reluctance to trust anything free.

[wtd]

Well, that's silly. Why would you need "support" for a compiler?

[Tony]

what if it umm... doesn't compile something haha, silly schools

[md]

Something I've noticed about the world: If it doesn't make sense people will do it.