in reply to Re^3: If I could only own one Perl book, it would be:
in thread If I could only own one Perl book, it would be:

Ah, but you never had to submit assignments of code on paper did you? (I do, though not in Perl, not yet. No lecturer knows perl. All of us students are entirely man-page-taught or The-Camel-taught.)
It just makes no sense to submit stuff that way, considering that if it were a complete program on a computer, you just compile and run and you find out if the thing works...

I totally understand about sketching out the idea on paper, I do that too - and my intention was not to cast stones (rocks? pebbles? what is the correct usage?) on that practice. Just a bit of college student spleen being vented, hopefully offending no one. :)

  • Comment on Re^4: If I could only own one Perl book, it would be:

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Re^5: If I could only own one Perl book, it would be:
by gellyfish (Monsignor) on May 24, 2006 at 14:42 UTC

    Ah, but you never had to submit assignments of code on paper did you?

    Well as it happens I did - on eighty column coding sheets that were hand checked by the lecturer and then entered by a punch card operator. Of course this wasn't Perl.

    /J\

[reply]
      Ouch
      *Attempts to extract foot from mouth*
      *Fails miserably*
[reply]
Re^5: If I could only own one Perl book, it would be:
by Anonymous Monk on May 24, 2006 at 15:11 UTC
    Ah, but you never had to submit assignments of code on paper did you?

    Yes. We called them "printouts". :-)

    Proofs that a given algorithm worked in a given way would be written by hand on paper; anything that could be run submitted online, with documentation, and paper printouts for the convenience of the teaching assistants who graded most of the assignments.

    It was easier for the TAs to run a test suite against the code; verify minimal correctness, and *then* audit the paper copies of the code for style and correctness, and submitting code online just made their lives a bit easier.

    Some prof in a data structures class gave an assignment that basically said: "Implement a linked list datastructure in your language of choice"; some guy I knew decided to use Perl (which has list processing pretty much built in). The prof was not pleased; but gave full marks. He was more specific about choice of language the next time. That was back in 1993, so yes, professors know about Perl by now. They may or may not like it, but they know about it.

    --
    Ytrew

[reply]
      *sigh*
      *Sttempts another extraction of the foot from mouth kind*
      *fails again*

      I believe the phrase is *eats crow* :)

[reply]

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