Re: Re: Learning by Doing

Actually a GPA calculator is not as trivial as it sounds at first.

One of my projects at a mid-size 4-year regional school was to transition our paper transcript system to an electronic one. The old system had everyone's transcript on paper. New grades were printed on sticky labels every semester and each transcript had the label stuck to it by hand. If a grade was changed the records clerk used white-out and a typewriter to alter the transcript and a calculator to redo the GPA.

When I went about creating the GPA module, I ran into all the wierd "what ifs" that occur for the 1% of the students. For instance, if a student graduates with an undergrad degree, comes back and takes more classes but is not in grad school, does their overall GPA start over with the new classes or does it include the undergrad degree courses? Scary answer: different clerks in the office did it different ways!

The lesson? a) Rarely is anything as simple as it seems. b) Solving a problem requires that you understand it FULLY, including all the crufty parts people like to avoid. It is these two items which make "Learning by Doing" so powerful!

Comment on Re: Re: Learning by Doing

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Re: Re: Re: Learning by Doing by exussum0 (Vicar) on Jan 07, 2004 at 18:02 UTC
Can we novices hope to find a niche to test our new-found teeth on some real programming? Or are we doomed to a life of Comp. Sci. 101 excercises until we get us a nice computer job? You see, the poster isn't talking about systems analysis and design, finding out what the user wants and implementing it. He's simply asking about where can he find non-examples.. full applications to write. You see, you wrote code for something w/o a spec. The basis of a GPA calculator is really simple. Do a few multiply's, a few adds, and a divide, and you have a gpa. Designing an interface on top of it, checking inputs and what not into an application is more of a challenge. What you ran into, was creating a simple application, and not passing user acceptance testing. :\ Play that funky music white boy..	[reply]

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Re: Re: Re: Learning by Doing
by exussum0 (Vicar) on Jan 07, 2004 at 18:02 UTC

Can we novices hope to find a niche to test our new-found teeth on some real programming? Or are we doomed to a life of Comp. Sci. 101 excercises until we get us a nice computer job?

You see, you wrote code for something w/o a spec. The basis of a GPA calculator is really simple. Do a few multiply's, a few adds, and a divide, and you have a gpa. Designing an interface on top of it, checking inputs and what not into an application is more of a challenge. What you ran into, was creating a simple application, and not passing user acceptance testing. :\

Play that funky music white boy..

[reply]