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Re: A bit of advice re University and such is requested

From:Robert Hailman <robert@...>
Date:Friday, September 8, 2000, 21:47
"H. S. Teoh" wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 07, 2000 at 11:20:17PM -0400, Yoon Ha Lee wrote: > [snip] > > At Cornell at least, the workload for CS and double-E are pretty > > stiff...mainly because you *can't* predict debugging time. Or at least I > > never could. Plays hob with any attempts to budget time. :-/ > [snip] > > Advice from a CS graduate: If you want to take CS, be prepared to spend > *indefinite* amounts of time on design/coding/debugging. Especially > debugging, as Yoon points out here. It's not that programming assignments > are hard; it's just that you need to spend a lot of *time* on it. Even the > easiest mistake (like missing a semicolon in C, which traditionally causes > cryptic errors that gives absolutely no clue that the missing semicolon is > the cause of your woes) can take several hours to locate. I know this has > happened to me more often than I'd like to admit :-) > > You just need to allocate like twice or thrice the amount of time you > *think* you need for programming assignments. 'Cos almost always, you'll > end up taking more time than you expected. Not because it's hard -- often, > you can quite easily figure out what needs to be done; the problem is that > sometimes simple problems take a long time to locate, and unexpected > things have a bad habit of creeping up just before the assignment due > date. :-) > > CS theory courses are a different can 'o worms, though. In general I'd > say, pay a LOT of attention to required 1st/2nd year math courses. They > are required for a reason -- you won't survive upper year theory courses > unless you make sure you understand the math stuff in 1st/2nd year, > tempting though it is to disregard them. Of course, IMNSHO upper year CS > theory courses belong more in the math dept than CS, but that's another > story... :-) >
Thanks for the advice. It's always good to know these things. -- Robert