On Wednesday, December 21, 2011 11:57:32 AM, Sean Dague wrote: > On 12/21/2011 10:07 AM, Joseph Apuzzo wrote: > <snip> > > > I think that all would are interested in learning are willing to put in > > the work. > > The question still stands what structure does one need to learn to be > > able to use the language to be able to create? > > Thus I am talking about "foundation" studying, granted it will be hands > > on real programming projects, but like learning a new spoken language > > how to lead the student so they can "think" in the new language. > > Honestly, unless you are re-enrolling in college, the foundation comes > later. Stop getting tripped up by how "language" gets used around > programming. You aren't learning to speak french, you are learning to > paint. Yes, you can learn a lot of theory up front before you ever put a > brush to canvas, but at the end of the day, it's not going to sink in > until your computer grinds to a halt because you accidentally loaded 2 > GB into an in memory array, reversed it by making a second copy of the > array, just to print out 10 entries to the terminal (on a machine with > 256 MB of ram... yes I did that, and I remember that epic mistake well > from college).
Wanted to add the following anecdote. Back when I was learning C the college (the U of I) gave us accounts on Unix machines (HP-UX with CDE) with a 20 MB quota for disk space soft limit, 40 MB disk quota hard limit. These Unix machines were set to make coredumps. It was horribly easy to make a programmatic error such that a program would generate a Segmentation Fault and then make a coredump that filled the user's account to the 40 MB hard limit. This then caused the user to automatically be logged out and the account to be locked until an administrator deleted files from the user's account. And of course I did that, although it was common. [I mean, who *hasn't* generated a Segmentation Fault when they're first trying to do dynamic multidimensional arrays with pointers? :-P] Luckily I did that during the DAY when the administrators were on duty, so the time my account was locked was short, and it only happened once. That lab had 24-hour access and it was more common for this to happen to students working at night or during the end of the semester, which is when this issue was seriously inconvenient. There's a reason your Linux boxes don't make coredumps. ;-) -- Chris -- Chris Knadle [email protected] _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) MHVLS Auditorium Jan 4 - Getting Involved in Open Source Feb 1 - Home Networking Made Simple with Amahi Home Server
