Kirby Urner wrote: > It's unfair to criticize quick and dirty code that pretends to be nothing > more. There's room in this world for one-off scripts that get the job done. > We all write "code to throw away" or should. Making everything you write > read like some CS text book example is a waste of precious time.
While I know enough about Kirby to know I'm hitting a straw man here: There is virtue in writing clear simple code even for one-off scripts. It is the same virtue as that of spelling notes to yourself correctly; practice improves your skills. > What I'm wondering is how many CS curricula emphasize team approaches, e.g. > teach extreme programming techniques, other ways to manage largish, scalable > projects. This should come earlier rather than later, so some appreciation > for the conventions of teamwork start tickling in (e.g. why should I waste > time documenting, writing a lot of test? -- because *you* aren't the only > reader of this code, duh). Actually, I think this is a flaw in many academic endeavors. Grading group efforts appropriately is harder than measuring individual effort. We tend to fall too easily into a competitive model rather than a cooperative one. When I was at Penn, the Wharton School was unique in their (mostly successful) efforts to teach how to work effectively in teams. --Scott David Daniels [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig
