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Demoted and Placed on Probation (at University of Washington computer science & engineering)
Quillette ^ | January 11, 2020 | Stuart Reges

Posted on 01/13/2020 4:48:07 PM PST by karpov

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To: doomtrooper99

Yep. The school that caves to this requirement is making their students unemployable. If they manage to land a job, they won’t keep it for very long. They’ll drive their co-workers nuts and the lead engineer will be telling the chief engineer, “We gotta get this clown outta here.” When they’re in their probationary period, how hard do you think that will be? Buh bye, PC loser!


21 posted on 01/13/2020 6:05:49 PM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity (Liberalism is a social disease.)
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To: karpov

We stopped recruiting here a long time ago.


22 posted on 01/13/2020 6:13:25 PM PST by Agatsu77
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To: karpov

Mark Steyn recently spoke about Cultural Confidence.

The confidence of having the Others fit into your culture, and asserting that your culture is good.


23 posted on 01/13/2020 6:25:51 PM PST by Chickensoup (Voter ID for 2020!! Leftists totalitarian fascists appear to be planning to eradicate conservatives)
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To: Vince Ferrer
"Compilers don’t care about your feelings."

I still have many fond debugging memories.

24 posted on 01/13/2020 6:40:16 PM PST by chief lee runamok (expect nothing)
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To: doomtrooper99
Code should be easy to follow and read.

Exactly.

Slacking [which today's yutes learn in SPADES] also leads to poor documentation. Teaching discipline in your coding corrects some of that.

25 posted on 01/13/2020 7:49:42 PM PST by kiryandil (Chris Wallace: Because someone has to drive the Clown Car)
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To: Calvin Locke

Nah, it was C++ on a Unix box.


26 posted on 01/13/2020 7:52:40 PM PST by kiryandil (Chris Wallace: Because someone has to drive the Clown Car)
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To: karpov
The use of gender-neutral names like Alex and Jun instead of Alice and Bob.

Alice, Bob and Eve (along with a cast of others) are standard names in cryptographic problems. Maybe we can change Eve the eavesdropper to James Comey.

The use of names that reflect a variety of cultural backgrounds: Xin, Sergey, Naveena, Tuan, Esteban, Sasha. An avoidance of references that depend on cultural knowledge of sports, pop culture, theater, literature, or games.

Take a minute, look it up on Wikipedia and figure it out. Usually the programming assignments I saw were well enough defined that you didn't need any external knowledge. For example, a bowling scoring assignment would explain how scoring is done so you didn't need to know about bowling to write the program.

27 posted on 01/13/2020 8:49:04 PM PST by KarlInOhio (Cutest internet video: Charlie bit my finger. Creepiest internet video: Joe Biden bit my finger.)
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To: Vince Ferrer

Truer words were never spoken. It is just lovely to get an error message list ten times longer than your program.


28 posted on 01/14/2020 6:49:29 AM PST by GingisK
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To: doomtrooper99

I just hate to work on undocumented software. It is especially bad when the code is either too clever or just pedestrian.


29 posted on 01/14/2020 6:51:32 AM PST by GingisK
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To: doomtrooper99

“Coding style is very important. Code should be easy to follow and read. I speak from professional experience. NOT teaching the good coding style cheats the students.”

totally. aside from being correct and robust, style is everything, because great style is what allows others to understand and easily modify a code; great style also helps to prevent bugs and makes finding bugs easier.

style includes a large number of elements, including:

1. Extensive and USEFUL commenting

2. Indention and use of a large amount of space (as opposed to scrunching everything up)

3. Avoidance of multi-line statements

4. Avoiding use of complex, esoteric, and obtuse constructs, including avoiding uncommon language elements unless there’s a damn good reason.

5. And of course use of structured programming techniques, such as avoiding breaking out of complex, nested loop structures in a willy nilly fashion, etc.


30 posted on 01/14/2020 12:00:57 PM PST by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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To: catnipman

Amen. I always say “I don’t care if your code works as long as I can read it we can fix it, if not, we toss it and start over”


31 posted on 01/14/2020 12:02:50 PM PST by GulfMan
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To: GulfMan

“Amen. I always say “I don’t care if your code works as long as I can read it we can fix it, if not, we toss it and start over””

and i would imagine that finding programmers that can write readable code is WAY more difficult than finding programmers who write code that works ...


32 posted on 01/14/2020 12:20:53 PM PST by catnipman (Cat Nipman: Vote Republican in 2012 and only be called racist one more time!)
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