I love helping beginning programmers!

[Sir Fredrick]

I'm rather fluent in C++, I can practically speak it as a second language. It's what I do for a living so I have to be good at it.

Anyway, tonight I was in the study lounge waiting for my Calc II class to start and there were 4 guys working on a program for their intro to C++ class. They were really stuck, so I helped them out. In 45 minutes I was able to help them get working code out of something wrought with syntax and logic errors (that is, they were telling the computer to do things that didn't make sense, in a way that the computer couldn't understand).
The program was simple and the mistakes were obvious, but I still came off looking like some mega genius. Talk about an ego boost.

 

[soccerbud34]

only if you were fluent in Java too.....
i'll camp outside you bed room door hehe

 

[notfred]

come over here and help with this linked list thing.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

No Java for me...I took a class on it back in the early days when it was young and nothing was compatible...in class we'd write perfectly correct code that wouldn't work in any browser, or it would work in one browser and not the other...got fed up with it. The prof was lousy anyway.

Other languages I have experience with are:
lisp (yuck, can't stand it...even if it is great for AI)
COBOL (2000 lines for a hello world program, anyone?)
FORTRAN (very limited)
Perl (best language out there...wish I had more time to study it)
BASIC
Visual Basic

Don't ask me for help in any of those though, I've only worked extensively with C++...just starting to get the hang of MFC.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

<< come over here and help with this linked list thing. >>



<lol> data structures right?

One thing that students need to learn is that professors do not give out correct code. They are trying to convey a concept or an idea, many of them do not even understand the programming language they are teaching all that well, because they grew up on something else, like pascal.
So anything they give you should be looked at from the standpoint of "ok, what does this mean, and how can I make it work?"

In my early days I got very frustrated with my professors for being unable to give me working code, but then I realized that they were doing it on purpose, so if I understood the concept well enough I ignored what they wrote on the board and came up with my own code...made life much easier.

 

[teriba]

I just finished a 1 year internship with Nortel Networks where a learned tons of languages. I can now do:
Visual C++ w/MFC
C++
Tcl/Tk
Perl
HTML
OPNET modeling

It's so sweet. I'm taking Java in school now and it is nearly identical to C so it's a breeze. There's no replacement for actually doing the work. Learning what I did in that year would have taken 20 years of school.

 

[Sir Fredrick]

I agree, nothing quite beats real world experience. Although if I never took classes, I wouldn't know what a linked list was...but then, would I be missing out? Haven't ever needed to use one.

Also, I didn't include markup languages in my list...been doing that since before I knew basic.

What is TCL/TK?

 

[teriba]

It's an interpreted language, multi-platform. Pretty nice except all the variables are global so you have to append the program name to the beginning of variables (calculator_x) or else they will use other programs variables if you have multiple Tcl/Tk programs running with the same variable names. Other than that it's cool.

 

[bunker]

COBOL (2000 lines for a hello world program, anyone?)

I hear ya. I started to teach myself COBOL before the whole y2k thing (had to at least attempt to cash in!) and gave up after it took so much code to print one line of text out to the screen. I'm stickin' with Java and VB thank you very much!

 

[oLLie]

<< I love helping beginning programmers! >>



:| Hey take it to Software/Programming you l33t programmer showoff

jk.

But damn if programmers aren't some of the cockiest freaking people...

 

[Sir Fredrick]

lol sorry. I don't even really like programming, to be honest. I used to think I didn't like teaching either, but that's sort of rubbing off on me...

 

[perry]

<< One thing that students need to learn is that professors do not give out correct code. They are trying to convey a concept or an idea, many of them do not even understand the programming language they are teaching all that well, because they grew up on something else, like pascal. >>



ROFL! True, true! Kids in my C++ class over the summer were complaining because they couldn't get the prof's code to compile and work properly. He'd give us an example on the board, they'd copy it down, and then try to get it to work for 20 minutes before they figured out it wasn't right. They'd look at everything they had written looking for the error before they figured out that the prof had given them code that wasn't right (syntax was right, logic was often slightly off).

Meanwhile, I would have looked at the prof's code, figured out it wasn't right, and was on my way figuring something else out. Some of the folks were awestruck. I'd just babble something incoherently and continue with my work. I hate homework, so I'd try to get as much done as I could in class and didn't feel like stopping to explain why that recursive loop wasn't working.

 

[trmiv]

Anyone fluent in Java please directa yo feetsa over to my thread and please try to help me out.