Posted by jason pepas on August 06, 2001 at 01:48:37:
In Reply to: Re: Rant Reply / General Thoughts (Pretty Important To All Of Us) posted by kalpol on July 31, 2001 at 20:15:21:
: I think a lot of people took Ford for CS315, not Downing. Ford's a nice guy ( I had him for CS105) but from what I heard the class didn't cover half of what Downing covers. I know if I hadn't had Downing, I'd be in deep doo-doo.
I for one did take Ford for CS315 last summer. I sat in one downings class for about the first two weeks the semester after I took Ford's class, just to see what Downing's class was like.
By the end of the first day, we had already covered several topics that ford never even touched.
So yes, I came into this class probably knowing less than half of what I needed in order to do these projects.
However, this has forced me to learn those things on my own. Doing so has made me largely self sufficient, and has changed my attitude from "I dont already know everything I need for this project, so I am screwed", into an attitude of "I can program anything you could possibly throw at me, its just a matter of how much time you give me". i.e., my confidence as a programmer is way higher than what it would have been otherwise.
Unfortunately, I am one of the people who have put shitloads of hours into these projects, only to see most of them not able to complete a successful run of dvw's grading scripts, thus giving me a grade about as high as the people who didnt really do jack squat. It is frustrating to see such a large disparity between how much you are learning and what grade you get. But when you think about it, one of two things will happen. 1, dvw will re-arrange his grading scheme to allow people like me to pass, or 2, I will fail and take this class again. However, the second time around, I will have working or nearly working data structures which are pretty fast. So I will actually get to focus on making things fast, because all of the ground work will be out of the way. (also, I'll get to spend another semester in college before I go into the "real world").
: As for this class, I'm suffering from the disorganization, yeah, but I'll pass, and God knows I've learned more in this class than I did from Mossaad's CS310 and things of this nature.
Fuckin A' kalpol - you hit that situation right on the head. So many people seem to hate dvw. But at least dvw makes us learn, whether directly or indirectly. Mossad, on the other had, is someone who shouldn't even be allowed to teach. His lectures are a waste of time, he gives examples in class of technology which is 7 years out of date (what does it say when a student has more up to date knowledge of processors than the professor just from casually reading tech websites?), and fills his tests with trick questions and mindless work like converting entire programs from assmebly to binary, rather than testing to see if his students actually know something about the subject. For those who still have 310 or 352 ahead of them, spend your education dollar wisely and AVOID MOSSAD.