Well I’m glad I didn’t have a full semester dedicated to trivial tools and boomer software
The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
41–50 of 347 posts
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sat with a talented developer whilst we wrestled with a threading issue this past week. I wanted to inspect the value of a variable within a method during execution and asked him to set a breakpoint. He didn't know how to do that in the IDE, which he'd been using for over a year. Debugging is indeed a skill which needs learning.
A talented developer who doesn't know how to set a breakpoint sounds contradictory to me.
Hi! I'm that person! Senior engineer, decade of experience. I've used debuggers in the past, both for running code and looking at core dumps, but I really don't find them to be cost effective for the vast majority of problems. Just write a print statement! So when I switched from C to python and go a couple jobs ago, I never bothered learning how to use the debuggers for those languages. I don't miss them.
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#43Hmm, my education must have been better than I give it credit: I definitely was taught all of these concepts at uni.
Which uni was this? Presumably you're a proud alumni, even if you don't want to donate money to them, you might at least consider repping them in this context for having taught you this stuff. Fwiwi, many CS programs focus on the science end of things like Big Oh notation, and utterly fail to discuss any day-to-day, practical applications of things.
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sat with a talented developer whilst we wrestled with a threading issue this past week. I wanted to inspect the value of a variable within a method during execution and asked him to set a breakpoint. He didn't know how to do that in the IDE, which he'd been using for over a year. Debugging is indeed a skill which needs learning.
A talented developer who doesn't know how to set a breakpoint sounds contradictory to me.
True. A talented developer abuses the hell out of breakpoints by using hit counts, conditions and trigger points.
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
A talented developer who doesn't know how to set a breakpoint sounds contradictory to me.
Hi! I'm that person! Senior engineer, decade of experience. I've used debuggers in the past, both for running code and looking at core dumps, but I really don't find them to be cost effective for the vast majority of problems. Just write a print statement! So when I switched from C to python and go a couple jobs ago, I never bothered learning how to use the debuggers for those languages. I don't miss them.
What makes you talented?
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#46I was blessed with a badass AIX teacher. Thank you Coleman University for allowing hackers and AIX in your facility!
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
A talented developer who doesn't know how to set a breakpoint sounds contradictory to me.
Hi! I'm that person! Senior engineer, decade of experience. I've used debuggers in the past, both for running code and looking at core dumps, but I really don't find them to be cost effective for the vast majority of problems. Just write a print statement! So when I switched from C to python and go a couple jobs ago, I never bothered learning how to use the debuggers for those languages. I don't miss them.
> I never bothered learning how to use the debuggers for those languages. I don't miss them.
This could be causal.
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#48By a happy accident I did a 3 year masters program in India called Research Assistant program. I was a system-admin at the CS department's for 3 years. I had to do ton of stuff, like setting up and maintaining backups, installing tools such as DNS, mail servers, handling server failures, provisioning new servers, debug networking failures by inspecting router connections, so on and so forth. It was a lot of work but super fun and lots of stories. This was ~20 years ago so no SaaS tools etc., One had to do almost everything in house and we had to use free/open-source tools to save money.
That experience taught me so much and I still use most of those learnings on a day to day basis.
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#49Lots of laudatory comments here about this being essential but missing teaching but I have a different take. The content looks good, nothing wrong with teaching these things. But these things can be and are learned on the job fairly quickly for anyone interested enough in the field and with enough aptitude. In fact, I would say these things can be learned on your own time as a side effect of being interested in computers.
So I would say it's good content, but not essential for a CS program.
Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)
#50I love vim, it's great to know how to navigate it, but I have met very few people who use it professionally. I'd love to hear others' experiences, there.
I'm not fond of Vim, have been an Emacs user for going on 40 years, starting with Gosmacs. That said, I'd rather that students learn one editor really well, rather than the smattering of editor/IDE usage most of them seem to acquire. So, fine, teach them enough Vim that they can use it well, afterwards, they can use whatever editor they choose.