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Re: [LUG] Linux @ University of Plymouth

 

Thanks for the great advice everyone! I own the The Art of Programmer, and have read it several time in the last couple of years. I taught myself unit testing several years back and force myself to make my code as modular as possible. I follow a lot of coding discussion and critique (the kernel mailing list is a fantastic place to find out what people think are bad coding habits :D).

I like your idea of prototyping functions by printing out what it does. While I normally design everything in advance and structure it on paper and using diagramming; I've never thought of transferring that same idea to the actual coding. Thanks.

I'm already a member of the termisoc mailing list, so that's sorted but I didn't know about the BCS chapter, so I'll look into that, again thanks.

Personally I'm a big fan of minimalistic commenting in my programming; coding as if comments didn't exist, and only adding comments in when something needs explanation, rather than commenting every line, a good article on it can be found on Coding Horror.

My main aim for uni, apart from the social aspect is to get some peer review on my work, as it were. I've self taught up till now, and while I try my best to follow conventions, standards and program design it is still all self taught and neither myself, nor the internet and books are infallible so it will be good to see what I don't know and were I'm weak.

Regards, Ross Bearman


On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 10:01 AM, Tom Potts <tompotts@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Monday 11 August 2008 22:26, Aaron Trevena wrote:
> 2008/8/5 Dave Foxcroft <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> > Ross Bearman wrote:
> >> I'll hopefully be joining Plymouth as a Computer Science undergraduate
> >> this September and was wondering if anyone on the list is currently
> >> studying at Plymouth, previously studied at Plymouth, or just happens to
> >> know about the state of Computing there.
> >
> > I Graduated from UoP last year - topped up from an HND - it's a great
> > place - never had any problems with any of the staff - all very
> > dedicated and willing to help if you have any problems.
>
> I graduated from UoP in 2000, from the CSN course before they dumbed
> it down (and added extra requirements) and when Cisco still came
> cherrypicked the best students.
>
> I'd say the most important things to make a difference both to the
> degree and the value of your time in uni are :
> * Learn some practical programming skills - how to do unit tests, how
> to use a debugger, how to find common bugs, when to walk away from the
> keyboard- they won't teach you this at uni and it means you're more
> likely to get your coursework and exersizes done with time to do it
> well and not get tripped up before you get anywhere, which can be a
> big problem when you're out of your depth.
Unit tests and learning to debug are THE best things you can do in computing.
I was self taught in computing and used them as (I thought) crutches. I
worked later with coders who could write 1000 lines of 99.99% good code.
I'd do maybe 200 lines and some unit tests. I'd have stable software in less
than 20% of the time that the lightning coders but was regarded as a
shirker!!!!!  With well constructed unit tests you can find system errors in
a single click. It may make little sense to you at first but keep at it.
Learn Knuth - "the art of computer programming".
Learn to throw code away - its a lot better to start again than try and twist
100,000 lines to do what you now know they should do rather than what you
thought they would do when you read the (now rewritten) spec. Especially as
you didn't put in enough unit tests!!!
Go read Knuth again.
Dont be afraid to prototype systems - making almost empty objects that maybe
just write the line " Object.Function called with ...." to a console just to
get a feel for whats happening. I don't think you can be a good coder without
being a good systems architect and vice-versa. Alas, when you get to this
point you will have to learn to kill managers without being caught.
People learn from their mistakes - I know more than most!
Tom te tom te tom

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