Year View| Monday 12 April 2004 (Day View)

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12.04.2004 – Monday 12 April – Scooby Doo

• After ages in my room, in front of my computer, I got thoroughly sick of it, decided to head into the city, and get something to eat. I ended up getting a very yummy felafel kebab from a kebab place at Indooroopilly and seeing “Scooby Doo 2 – Monsters Unleashed”, which is just as embarrassingly silly as it sounds, but sort of fun too.

COMP2301

• I’m currently attempting “Systems Interface Programming”, a pass/fail course where we are required to submit a coding assignment each two weeks. We are given the specifications of what is required – however they are deliberately sparse, even going so far as to have intentional “mistakes”, or rather, parts left out that make them ambiguous. We, as a course collective, must figure out how to do things in a standard way because our submitted code or its output has to interact with other student’s efforts. There are no lectures. We are literally just told to do this, and then we have to go do it. It’s in a different language each time – so far, I’ve done C, the next one is in VB then C++ after that (I think). A lot of us (me included) don’t know these languages, so we have to learn them, and produce a working application that meets the specifications (including the ad-hoc specs we come up with to make them interoperable) within two weeks – and failing any one means we can’t pass the course.
  Many students complain because there are no lectures – no teaching of any sort, we’re all on our own and thrown in at the deep end, but everyone I’ve talked to “in industry” has said how fabulous this course sounds. It probably forces us to learn a lot more than we’d learn in a “normal” course, and not just how to code, but how to interoperate, how to learn the necessary skills to get a job done – and fast, and how to produce what’s required, within the required timeframe, whether we initially know how to or not. In this respect, “COMP2301 – Systems Interface Programming” is probably the most “realistic” course I’ve done so far.

Comment by Mum – Tuesday 13 April 2004, 5:05 PM

  OOer, sounds spooky. but might be the real world, which can be spooky and with no help of the usual sort available. Just like real life. Can see why it might be included. Hope all goes well.

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