"How is this preparing us for the real world?"



  • Thank you, thedailywtf.com, for being a constant reminder for me to not expect something miraculous from my future job.

    I'm an undergrad studying CS, and Sir Lazy Professor once again graced us with an assignment to implement a few functions using some horribly written data structures.

    Student: Wtf is up with this Graph class!?
    TA: I dunno, even the professor said it was the worst graph implementation he'd ever seen.
    Student: Why is he giving it to us, then? Who wrote it?
    TA: Some Dutch guy.

    After struggling with the code for awhile with no success, my frustrated classmate disgustedly turns to me and barks, "How is this in any way preparing us for the real world!? You're never going to have to be working with someone else's horrible code!"

    Haah.



  •  Post the codez plz.



  • It's one of those things you sort of come full-circle on.  When I was in college, I always felt like my classes were completely useless.  Then I got a job and realized that most programmers don't have clue what they are doing.  However, now I remember how most of my classmates couldn't figure out how to compile their Java apps without an IDE and I see how college tried to warn me.  I was hated in my programming classes because I used javac from the Windows command line while everyone else begged for an extension so they could get CodeWarrior to function correctly. 



  •  I actually am facing the opposite situation, all code/desing/anything that is ever trhown out at me is -appearently- on optimum state, and we are tought to develop stuff to always look like that. Of course, there ARE better and worse ways to do things, but one problem I have is some of my profs. will only approve things done 'their way', and it's not necesariously 'the best way' -tho it's better than the worst, but still-. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I was hated in my programming classes because I used javac from the Windows command line
     

    I was hated in mine because I was a smug prick.




  • @morbiuswilters said:

    However, now I remember how most of my classmates couldn't figure out how to compile their Java apps without an IDE and I see how college tried to warn me.  I was hated in my programming classes because I used javac from the Windows command line while everyone else begged for an extension so they could get CodeWarrior to function correctly.
    The best thing my college did for us was to throw us head-first into a Unix environment.  It forced us to figure it out while simultaneously writing 10 kloc programs.  You tell the students who were using Windows' telnet to login because they stopped using backspace.



  • @Aniviel said:

    After struggling with the code for awhile with no success, my frustrated classmate disgustedly turns to me and barks, "How is this in any way preparing us for the real world!? You're never going to have to be working with someone else's horrible code!"

    Wait until you have been in the industry for a few years and then decide to go back to get your M.S. Then you will REALLY see how inane CS professors can be.



  • The joke really is on OP. The dutch guy is frequently your boss. You'll get fired if you change his beautiful data structure or blamed if the software doesn't work. The trick is to make the software work, and appear to use the broken data structure at the same time.



  • @arty said:

    The trick is to make the software work, and appear to use the broken data structure at the same time.
    In other words, have the cake and eat it too.



  • @Lingerance said:

    cake
     

    mmmm cake.



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @Lingerance said:

    cake
     

    mmmm cake.

    The cake is a lie!


  • /me apologizes for not getting the joke himself sorry.



  • I realize this is probably an early Data Structures class with 500+ students, but most of the time professors will listen to the students and make changes accordingly.  Or, if he won't, just write your own Graph implementation, use it, then deal with the professor later.

    Heck, in my Algorithms class, the professor would let you use any language you wanted, and you could often change the problem by dropping/easing requirements, and you would STILL get credit.  Finally, in my DB class, the final project was to write some webapp that had an Oracle backend.  Only problem was no one knew anything about web programming.  Eventually I just said "fuck it" and my teammate and I just wrote a Swing app and no deductions for it.



  • 90% of what you learn in college will be obsolete the day you graduate. The purpose of college is to drink large quantities of beer, become champion of [insert name of currently popular video game here] and in your spare time learn how to learn

    Despite my A+ in FORTRAN I found no one beating down my door for a FORTRAN programmer in 1990, however I'm still proud of my remarkable success in leading the Tecmo Bowl Vikings to unprecedented success and my superior reign of the purple corner in Atari Warlords.

     

     

     



  • @Outlaw Programmer said:

    I realize this is probably an early Data Structures class with 500+ students, but most of the time professors will listen to the students and make changes accordingly.  Or, if he won't, just write your own Graph implementation, use it, then deal with the professor later.

    Yep, this is Data Structures and Algorithms; comes straight after CS I and II.

    This was to be written during class, so time was an issue as we discovered that rewriting the structure would have been easier than trying to modify the given. In retrospect, that is exactly what we should have done. The grading is all done by TA's, and we are given the freedom to choose languages and modify or rewrite whatever is given to us. It's just that to a recently-woken mind, ;) the path of least resistance is to not re-invent the wheel. (Of course, your mistake is soon evident when you look down and discover two cubes stuck to your axle.)

    Meh. My intent was not to complain about being given crappy code, because I know what a reality that can be; better to take it in stride and gain experience puzzling out a WTF, right?



  • @medialint said:

    The purpose of college is to drink smoke large quantities of beer weed, become champion of [insert name of currently popular video game here] beer pong and in your spare time learn how to learn. get laid as much as possible

    FTFY. 



  • @Hatshepsut said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I was hated in my programming classes because I used javac from the Windows command line
     

    I was hated in mine because I was a smug prick.

    In my first year classes, we were not allowed to use an IDE, we had to use javac, and svn from the shell, and were allowed to choose our editor from Emacs, Xcode, Vim, and text wrangler. The only exception to the rule was if you knew how to set up emacs, you could use the relevant commands (the .emacs file was almost vanilla).


  • @Physics Phil said:

    @Hatshepsut said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I was hated in my programming classes because I used javac from the Windows command line
     

    I was hated in mine because I was a smug prick.

    In my first year classes, we were not allowed to use an IDE, we had to use javac, and svn from the shell, and were allowed to choose our editor from Emacs, Xcode, Vim, and text wrangler. The only exception to the rule was if you knew how to set up emacs, you could use the relevant commands (the .emacs file was almost vanilla).

    They taught you how to use SVN?  One of my primary complaints is that CS grads don't know shit about real software development, especially revision control.  Waitaminute.. you must be from Europe or something.. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    They taught you how to use SVN?  One of my primary complaints is that CS grads don't know shit about real software development, especially revision control.  Waitaminute.. you must be from Europe or something.. 
    My favorite professor taught us the beginnings of SVN.  mostly the svn co and svn ci commands.  none of the fancy stuff.  Taught us a bit of vim too.  I still use vim for text editing on my windows machine.  I love it so much[1].  But I use an IDE for actual code stuffages.

    Anyways, I went to the aforementioned Miami University (OH).

    [1] - This message brought to you by the insane part of Belgarion's brain.



  •  In my college one of my professors said:

     

    "Please code this assignment in C, you may code in C++ but since I don't know it I won't be able to help you much."

     

    Not that this is not from the early 90s or 80s, this is from 2000s. She has been teaching for over 10 years.

     

    Only one professor made me think about Race Conditions, possible points of failure, etc... And he could not teach to save his life.



  • @dlikhten said:

    "Please code this assignment in C, you may code in C++ but since I don't know it I won't be able to help you much."

    God, I wish I didn't know C++.  Still, you think she would know some OO language, unless she was just teaching OS and compiler theory. 



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    God, I wish I didn't know C++.
     

     

    That's similar to what I say just about every time I turn on the television.

    God, I wish I didn't know English.
     



  • @medialint said:

    That's similar to what I say just about every time I turn on the television.

    God, I wish I didn't know English.

    I frequently find myself wishing I was blind.  Wimminz in the Northeast can be quite terrifying.



  • I'm approaching the end of my BSc ComSc at Cardiff, and so far, not too much of it has seemed WTFy.

    First year module, both semesters: Java and Algorithms, Textpad being the "editor of choice"... Eclipse/Netbeans are both available, although I tend to use any code-colouring-capable editor on Linux so I know how it's doing everything if anything even goes wrong.

    Noone's ever mentioned SVN, although a fellow student does use it, and taught me how to use ant in return for php and css help :-)

     

    C and C++ were both taught in the same second year "Object Oriented Methods" module, in which most of the homework, and the coursework, involved implementing the same task in C, C++ and Java, and commenting on the various opporunities for WTFery.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Physics Phil said:

    @Hatshepsut said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I was hated in my programming classes because I used javac from the Windows command line
     

    I was hated in mine because I was a smug prick.

    In my first year classes, we were not allowed to use an IDE, we had to use javac, and svn from the shell, and were allowed to choose our editor from Emacs, Xcode, Vim, and text wrangler. The only exception to the rule was if you knew how to set up emacs, you could use the relevant commands (the .emacs file was almost vanilla).

    They taught you how to use SVN?  One of my primary complaints is that CS grads don't know shit about real software development, especially revision control.  Waitaminute.. you must be from Europe or something.. 

    I'm Australian. Part of the reason we had to use SVN was that the automarker used for some practicals read from the SVN repository.


  • @Aniviel said:

    How is this in any way preparing us for the real world!? You're never going to have to be working with someone else's horrible code!

     

    The pure innocent naivety is enough to bring tears to anyone's eyes...


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