Programming elective?

dr gonzo

Hey im studying arts currently but ive a bit of programming experience behind me(In that i studied a bit of programming rather then experience actually programming) So i wanted to refresh what littles skills i have and train a bit more in it cause ive always enjoyed it.

Firstly how far do you go with the programming electives? are they any use? and how much difficulty do you think i would have ultimately training myself up in Objective C for some IPhone app development?

Cheers everyone.

Xhristy

This post has been deleted.

bnt

I just did an elective called "Computer Science for Engineers II" (COMP20080), which presupposes a little C knowledge and starts on basic C++ object-oriented programming. If you already have OO experience you'll probably find it too easy, but I didn't, so it was just right. Programming is half the course, the other half is on formal software engineering strategies. I'm starting on Java programming over the summer, since I'm thinking of developing some small apps for the Android platform.

conor.hogan.2

programming for engineers will give you a good basis in c.

programming for engineers two appaerently will help with oop and c++ which coupled with ansi c and a bit of xcode you should be laughing.

pljudge321

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

programming for engineers will give you a good basis in c.

programming for engineers two appaerently will help with oop and c++ which coupled with ansi c and a bit of xcode you should be laughing.

Both those modules aren't the best, you could learn the c++ part of programming 2 in around two days and the labs are pretty pointless. Computer Engineering which is a 2nd year E&E engineering module would be a much better module to do, its much better taught, more challenging and the labs are run well.

conor.hogan.2

I have no idea - i would imagine it would depend on what level you are at.

For me the prog from engineers 1 was my first bit of programming and I found it tricky at times but grand in the end - hopefully anyway.

pljudge321

Computer Engineering starts c again from scratch, it does move at a faster pace and there are three lectures a week as opposed to two a week in the other two modules. The notes provided are excellent though, both lecture slides and a separate book. The labs are also much more engaging and interesting, creating a hangman game and optimising a perfect number generator. Also the TA's, who are engineering postgrads, are actually decent unlike most of the TA's you seem to get in computer science modules.

ironclaw

Computer Science for Engineer's was very good this year. I'm from a fairly advanced programming language background and it does lay the foundations very well in C.

Objective-C is an object language, but from my experience is much better to grasp basic C before moving into objective languages.

iPhone development in itself is extremely difficult (I think any way )and I don't expect to learn it too quick. I'm about 12 months at Objective-C now and I wouldn't be too confident to port to iPhone just yet.

pljudge321

ironclaw wrote: »

Computer Science for Engineer's was very good this year. I'm from a fairly advanced programming language background and it does lay the foundations very well in C.

Are the labs still run so that you have to complete all of the tasks and submit it before the end of the lab session? When I did it there didn't seem to be any coherence between lectures and labs. We had one lab that required the use of pointers before they had been covered in lectures, this was then made worse by the deadline for submission and scarcity of TA's.

ironclaw

pljudge321 wrote: »

Are the labs still run so that you have to complete all of the tasks and submit it before the end of the lab session? When I did it there didn't seem to be any coherence between lectures and labs. We had one lab that required the use of pointers before they had been covered in lectures, this was then made worse by the deadline for submission and scarcity of TA's.

They are a wee bit like that but putting that aside, it did work well if the student worked well. Programming really is the type of thing that someone has to want to learn.

bnt

In the CS for Engineers II course the C++ Labs were on the Friday morning, but we had until the end of the day. We were given the assignment earlier in the week, and I sometimes got it done before the day of the Lab.

pljudge321

bnt wrote: »

In the CS for Engineers II course the C++ Labs were on the Friday morning, but we had until the end of the day. We were given the assignment earlier in the week, and I sometimes got it done before the day of the Lab.

The labs were a bit of a joke in that module, they got progressively easier in the last four or so.