[Coco] dumb profs wasRe: trig.h

[gene heskett]

On Wednesday, January 12, 2011 07:03:22 pm Willard Goosey did opine:

> On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 07:07:16AM -0500, Steven Hirsch wrote:
> > As I said, it has begotten 50MB binaries that require 1GB of memory to
> > run and execute like a snail even at that.  Before being turned loose
> > on the world to code The Next Big App, all new CS grads should be
> > exposed to something like, e.g. WordStar running on a 48k Z80 machine
> > and asked to think about it for a moment.
> 
> Heh.  Yeah, they should have to do some fairly large (for the machine)
> project on a CP/M or FLEX or OS-9 box, just to show them how to do it
> right.
> 
> CS students should also be given a project that involves some old code
> (maybe their own, from a previous class?) where they're handed the
> code and told, "There's a bug in this!  Fix it by tomorrow!"
> 
That I think would be a novel way to teach, but I think it just might be 
the best medicine that could be prescribed in most cases.  Why?  Because no 
matter how cute and sweet smelling you think your code is, someone else 
trying to run it will come back and ask "why does it do this when I told it 
to do that?"  I have long since lost track of the times that has happened 
to me, then I go back to see how they got that miss-behavior and it will 
reach up and slap me in the face when I spot it.  We tend to gloss them 
over as brain farts, but lets call them mistakes and be honest about it.

> Willard


-- 
Cheers, Gene
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