From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,f292779560fb8442 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,af40e09e753872c X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: f8c65,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gidf8c65,public X-Google-Thread: 10db24,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid10db24,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1008e3,30e368bdb3310fe5 X-Google-Attributes: gid1008e3,public From: rsrodger@wam.umd.edu (Bob Rodgers) Subject: Re: Hungarian notation Date: 1996/05/24 Message-ID: <4o549j$h28@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 156644271 references: <31999F43.41C67EA6@scn.de> <319D2278.3F9A@netonecom.net> <4nr50r$jo2@ringer.cs.utsa.edu> <4ns02o$ep3@goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU> <4o07o9$rfu@seagoon.newcastle.edu.au> <4o1vo3$p2a@news1.ni.net> organization: University of Maryland College Park newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.modula3,comp.lang.modula2,comp.edu,comp.lang.eiffel Date: 1996-05-24T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) wrote: >Well, I guess they just don't want to comment the code and don't come to ask >you question anymore. I'm a student in CS, and I know what the students feel. > When the project is dued soon and don't get the program works, do you still >have time to comment to code?" Yes. Yes, you certainly do. In fact, if you haven't been commenting all along, that's probably why you're pushing the deadline and the project doesn't work yet. The time to start programming right is *now*, not later. I laugh when I see or hear a CS teacher who says they get caught by the assignment = in conditional expressions, since no modern compiler lacks the ability to flag this as an error (or the old constant-first trick, e.g., "if(3 = x)" will **always** error) if you decide to read one or two pages of documentation. >On the contrary, my students know that working code is useless to hand in >if it is not commented, so they *have* to comment the code. In fact a >well-commented and well-designed but not quite working assignment gets >much more credit than a fully working program which is poorly designed, >or has incomplete or incomprehensible comments. One of the problems in CS is the focus on "execution" correctness instead of overall correctness. It's a lot easier to grade (it either works, or it doesn't), but it doesn't really address student difficulties (especially with pointers, which kill first year student projects all the time without them even knowing how to identify it as anything but "it's acting weird, time to reboot"), nor grade on the quality of the code. One thing I remember, and will always remember, is a statement from a teacher: "If you have a bug, you have an error." I was quite frankly surprised at how many students didn't realize this -- instead, they tried to solve project problems with various degrees of mojo -- rebooting, renaming their data files, changing where things are in a file, compiling with and without debug code. Some beleagered students will actually print out their project and re-type the "problem sections" -- accidently fixing errors, or making them less apparent (i.e., serious pointer problems that, by happenstance, make the program crash sooner or later, or not at all, even though they haven't actually moved). CS education is in a sorry state when the only criteria to pass a class are the ability to memorize the string function examples and get a project working, even if it's spaghetti.