All you programmers, have a good laugh at my education

[Prometheus]

The university I'm going to next fall has a requirement for "computer literacy competency" to graduate, either a test or a stupid class, which is also a prerequisite to Computer Science classes. The so-called "computer literacy competency exam" consisted of some general knowledge (including arranging floppy disks, USB drives, CDs, and hard drives by general storage capacity) and knowledge specifically on how to use a few miscellaneous features in a small collection of proprietary programs: Microsoft Office, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Notepad. The worst part of it was Microsoft Office since it has a bizarre layout compared to e.g. LibreOffice, combined with the fact that any wrong click, even going into the wrong menu, counted as "incorrect", with 3 attempts permitted before the answer was marked as "wrong".

Man... That sounds like a college course that I walked out of in disgust, which was described to me (and, I learned some years later, quite a number of others, though some of them actually believed it and were then disappointed when the resulting qualification didn't get them the jobs that they'd been told it would get them) as a route into dealing with video games, but which actually consisted of having to follow excessively and detrimentally precise instructions on using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.


The course did not use the correct terminology for anything, and if you used keyboard shortcuts to get things done much quicker instead of following the specific orders of "Click 'Edit', click 'Copy', click where you want to paste the text, click 'Edit', click 'Paste'.", and so on, you were marked down.

 

[kojack]

At university I had a compulsory database class. I had already known sql for 6 years, but I almost failed the subject because I skipped half the classes (it was so boring) and the final exam had questions on Microsoft Access (such as which menu contained certain options).


The teachers also had a habit of teaching their favourite languages rather than what's going to be useful. Most programming subjects were in Modula 2, because the head of the department was on the modula 2 formal specification committee and one of the popular modula 2 compilers was written at our campus. There was also a class using BlackBox, a horrible, badly designed, badly implemented version of Component Pascal. C++ wasn't taught until third year (luckily I'd already been coding in C++ for 3 years and C for another 4 years before it).


I've had some great teachers and classes (the guys from the early days of TAFE college were awesome. All were professional engineers who really knew their stuff) and some really crap ones (university professors more concerned with their research hours than teaching).


My high school had a computer subject, it was using the pc version of deluxe paint, a comic animator program and sql. In maths (grade 12) they did a few weeks of basic programming on apple 2 computers. I already had 7 years self taught programming, so it was rather boring.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Well, I had the test today. It was all right. But I don't care, because I'm in the **** CS Honors Program at Stony Brook!

 

[diligentcircle]

Man... That sounds like a college course that I walked out of in disgust[...] which actually consisted of having to follow excessively and detrimentally precise instructions on using Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.


The course did not use the correct terminology for anything, and if you used keyboard shortcuts to get things done much quicker instead of following the specific orders of "Click 'Edit', click 'Copy', click where you want to paste the text, click 'Edit', click 'Paste'.", and so on, you were marked down.

Yup, that's pretty much exactly how the exam went. The good news is I passed, so I don't have to take the stupid class.

 

[Prometheus]

^ Lucky you. :lol:


And, good on you, BP! Did you burn your Quick Reference yet?

 

[Blue Protoman]

Not yet, I'm still in school. Trust me, I will.


The good news is, now we actually have a final project that's rather open-ended. I'm going to do a Brainfuck interpreter.

 

[kojack]

Hehe, cool.


I made a brainfuck compiler in D the other day. It actually parses brainfuck source code while compiling D (uses metaprogramming).


Although depending on the required scope of your project I'm not sure if brainfuck would be enough. Mine implemented all of the language except the comma operator (output an ascii character) and it was only 45 lines of code. In C++ it would be a bit bigger, but not by much. (D is awesome)


If I was doing a language based project, my first choice would be a Forth interpreter, I generally like reverse polish notation languages and they are easier to implement than conventional ones while still being useful.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Why Forth over Brainfuck? I mean, BF is really simple, isn't it?

 

[kojack]

Yep, BF is simple. But it may be too simple. As I said it depends on the scope of the project (how many marks it's worth, how long it should take, etc).


It's a fun language for messing with people though. I often threatened to add BF as a scripting language to the game engine I was working on. The lead coder was never really sure how serious I was about it.

 

[Blue Protoman]

Given that I only have a month left of school, BF will do just fine. Especially since I plan on tricking it out, polishing it to the level of real Linux software. (Thank God for Boost.Option)