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Date:      Tue, 23 Jan 2001 10:51:27 -0800 (PST)
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
Cc:        (FreeBSD Chat) <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: hungarian notation
Message-ID:  <XFMail.010123105127.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
In-Reply-To: <200101230837.BAA15273@usr08.primenet.com>

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On 23-Jan-01 Terry Lambert wrote:
> There were really two narrow windows in history where forces
> converged to turn out good code hackers; thankfully, in the
> second you didn't have to pay for CPU seconds.  You still get
> some, but I have to say that the yields have dropped since
> everyone can own as good hardware as the best thing they are
> likely to be able to play with in the first two years at the
> local university (part of the "force them to hang out together
> to have access to the machines" synergy thing there, too).

I would like to think that there are still some youngun's kicking around who
can code their way out of a cardboard box.  Mostly cause I like to think that I
can code my way out of a cardboard box.  I don't know how slow you would prefer
starting machines to be, but I can recall writing a simple 3D maze
program/psuedo game my senior year in high school that had to run on 386sx/20's
in the lab. :-P  It was very basic (no textures, just flat walls and distance
shading) but it was noticably better on the one 486/33 in the room.

As for the problems with kids at school not learning from each other, this is
something that I saw while in college myself.  I was an admin for our undergrad
CS lab, and the only people that really used the lab were all the business
majors that had to take Intro to C.  All the CS majors were at home.  They did
force us to do some group projects, but the way most of those worked out was
that each person would pick a piece of the project and run off and do it and
then we'd have fun integrating it all at the end.  (Usually we would at least
lay out the interfaces first so that integration wasn't too difficult.)

However, I can say that nothing beats face-to-face group work when it comes to
helping each other find bugs, devise optimal algorithms, interfaces, etc.  For
SMPng, many of us have had to settle for IRC as a poor substitute, but I would
love to be able to get us all together for a week in a room somewhere with a
steady flow of pizza and caffeine. :)

-- 

John Baldwin <jhb@FreeBSD.org> -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/
PGP Key: http://www.Baldwin.cx/~john/pgpkey.asc
"Power Users Use the Power to Serve!"  -  http://www.FreeBSD.org/


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