Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

Have you ever asked yourself what if Software patents are allowed?
Here’s a short look: Patented European webshop.

[Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure]

Have you ever had a normal (not a project) programming homework of ~800 lines?!? I hadn’t, until now…
I spent tons of hours making it because:
- I had to learn some things which were not taught at the university before the homework
- it had many tasks to complete
- I had to make it readable (= add comments, make README, add tests) - because this counts!
I had it finished at 4:30 a.m local time. I went to bed and this evening I’ve written comments, README, packed it and sent it.

And now… you might ask yourselves what for?
The answer is simple: out of 10 (the biggest grade possible at the end of the semester), all the homework count for 2.4 (there are 12 homework). That makes 0.2 for each homework.

That means that I have written 800 lines for only 2% of the final grade!
(some of the 0.2 points could have been recovered from bonuses coming from other homework)

I wish I won’t have to do such homework ever again! (unless it counts MORE)

(title of the linked page)
I came across this page while browsing the ArchLinux Forums. It is a great collection of error messages that really help confuse the user.

Enjoy

My quest for STL knowledge lead me to an extremely resourcefull site, actually a site for the Data Structures course of the Center for Conected Learning and Computer-Based Modelling in Northwestern University.

Resouces section in Data Structures Course:

Some of the following links date back pretty far and may be a bit
crufty, have broken links, etc.

• How to: Yell for Help, Code Good, Test Good
• About Algorithms and Data Structures
  • Chapter 8: Simple sorting algorithms
  • Chapter 9: Linked lists (commented in the original source)
  • Chapter 10: Budd’s RPN calculator
  • Chapter 10: Budd’s bank simulator
  • Chapter 11: A better backtracker
  • Chapter 12: Sets (commented in the original source)
  • Chapter 13: Trees
  • Red-black trees
  • Chapter 17: Hashtables
  • Chapter 19: Graphs

  Chapter references are to

• About the STL
  • Quick summary
  • STL resources (tutorials, implementations, references)
  • Notes on specific topics:
    • Templates and reference variables in C++
    • Iterators
    • Generic Algorithms
    • Passing functions to STL algorithms
    • Set algorithms
    • STL-think: how to program at a higher-level in C++ using the STL
    • How to define iterators

I was actually looking for methods of defining iterators but it seems I discovered a gold mine
Don’t forget to check out the STL resources link there.

Cristian Tudor Popescu, an ex-Computer Science and Automatic Control student, currently a well known newspaper editorialist, visited us today. A meeting was held in one of the biggest halls in Politehnica University. It was full.
The topics of discussion included:

• post-university life of Cristian Tudor Popescu - we found out lots of interesting things on how was life during the communist period in Romania
• the student life - how was it like, how is it now
• the educational system in Romania - thoughts of improvement

I will get back on you with some quotes that really impressed me…