Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

My T610 mobile has one more day until it celebrates 1 year staying my custody
I wanted to take it to the service to get it checked before going over the one year guarantee.

I’ve spent some time in the last days backup-ing almost everything out of it:

• contacts - this was the easiest part: I’ve send via Bluetooth all the contacts to a T630 at home.
• themes and sounds - I’ve send them via Bluetooth to the T630 mobile
• pictures - I’ve e-mailed all of them via CSD, during the night, at approximately 1KB/sec - I believe they were about 50 left on my mobile.
• messages - I’ve stored some of them on the SIM and.. here comes the fun part… I’ve written the others on the computer. Why so? Well, I’ve kept during the time lots of messages from Christmas, New Year, Easter, my birthday. Some of the messages are really interesting. I’ve got some really creative colleagues. Thereofore, I’ve created a small list of messages received on different occasions and freed my phone from storing them

The only things I couldn’t backup were profiles.

I took the mobile to my mobile provider service and they had a look. The mobile was blocked in their network so I assumed they also do service for them, like they did for my old mobile. They advised me to do turn off a setting to have more stability in the network. They also said I could leave the mobile for a thorough check (just like I initially planned). Unfortunately, I overlooked the fact that their service was not put in the list of authorized services to provide guarantee in the mobile’s papers.

My mobile has been working quite well ever since I’ve bought it. It only had a few network glitches some time ago and it didn’t go through that again. I hope the advice the service engineer gave me will definitely eliminate any possible problems for a long time (as we all know, not everything is everlasting).

Editing note: back-blogged entry on July 10th

I’ve noticed a strange pattern in my blog entries about semester endings. I always said “the most difficult semester I’ve had until now ended”. That doesn’t mean I’m complaining. It’s pure reality. I will have to repeat myself this time though. This was indeed the most difficult semester of all, of all semesters that passed and of all semesters that will come.

Statistics (& history) tell us that the 2nd year (of all 5) is the most difficult one. I one am happy to have finished this one, continuing to hope that in the next years we will learn some computer science, because I’m a bit fed up by subjects with a low usability in the future, according to my dreams/desires. I’ve actually asked some graduates if some difficult subjects are useful. The answer came naturally: no.

Also, statistically, as far as I’ve noticed, in the Computer Science and Automatic Control Faculty (my faculty) people fail exams at the subjects which are not in their specialization - such as the tons of electronics, while, at the same time, students at the Electronics and Telecomunications faculty fail similar electronics exams - their specialization. A bit weird, don’t you think? Not to mention that they have many more electronics subjects in the curricula than we have computer science subjects.

Oh, you might say now that computer science is not informatics. That’s true. We need to learn about how computers work. And I mean computers, not transistors, not bi-polar transistors which are no longer used. We need to know how computer components work, not how each electron moves between resistors, diodes, transistors etc. Well, it seems I’m sliding towards another post of mine. The same ideas seem to come up over and over while thinking of these first two years.

Some subjects to remember from this year:

• Assembly Programming - everybody says that the circumstances were not favourable in order to study this appriately; to much electrotechnics, electronics and physics eating up nights
• Numeric Methods - what can I say? lots of Mathematics, Matlab is powerful - very good for number crunching - this is not what I would call great subject, especially because of the tons of formulas I need to remember, but it’s nice to know there’s something specialized in doing Advanced Mathematics for you
• Object Oriented Programming - well, Java all the way (see my comments after the final exam)
• English - 2 semesters - I liked it because it was speciality-oriented, or at least it tried to be

Not much, isn’t it? Pretty dissapointing, IMO.

I could also add Psychological Education - a subject which is not in our speciality, but I must admit it was the in the needed dose for a computer science faculty; I really like this subject and the way the seminars were held.

As I said above, I hope the next years will bring what we’ve all been waiting for from this faculty. It might not fit exactly our dreams, but it try (I hope) to get close to them.

Answer: on paper… grr…

I had the last exam today: Object Oriented Programming.

It so happened that some recurring memories remembered me that the Educational System in Romania needs an overhaul. Some courses need an overhaul, some teachers need an overhaul… oh well.. let’s call the last thing a “training”.

Surprisingly, last time something similar happened was exactly during time of year (it was 1 year and 2 days ago to be very precise). The situation is 70% similar. Where do the extra 30% go? Answer: to the teacher.

The exam, short version:

• one huge problem, described in tons of words (it took me 1 A4 page - face & back to write it - I know this is relative) - above all, it wasn’t very clear either (just like the entire course, see below). Some colleagues managed to think like the teacher which is really an achievement considering the way he thinks - also, see below).
• 1h 30mins for the entire problem. In the end, we were given 2 hours after asking for more time. I wrote all the time and my finger tips still hurt AFTER the exam was over.
• we were allowed to use the computers to look over the Java documentation but you soon notice that it costs you time
• looking over my paper after the exam was over revealed that, out of the points I’ve lost, lots were for syntax mistakes, something which is normally done by the compiler, corrected by changing some types in the overridden functions and adding some castings. All the logic which I’ve tried so hard to add to the program didn’t count much as only the syntax problems were seen. There were also some mistakes caused by the pressure of the time. I thought Object Oriented Programming is not only about syntax, but about the logic behind also. I believe syntax is easier to check compared to logic. Syntax should be similar, all across 30+ papers. hen again, how can 2 people correct and understand 30+ papers of several pages filled with code (possibly with not much comments, because of lack of time) in 2 hours?

As some of you might not know, the Object Oriented Course is actually a Java course. We had a total of 4 programming courses until now:

1. Programming - generally speaking, actually a C/C++ course
2. Data Structures and Algorithms (DSA) - STL, Graph Algorithms, Object Oriented Programming — this course included some lectures on classes, inheritance, overriding operators, working with objects, template classes (using STL), all in C++. That was a great course compared to the OOP course (last in the list).We should thank to this teacher for not leaving us to learn OOP with the OOP teacher we had this semester
3. Programming in Assembly Language
4. Object Oriented Programming

Most of the students (myself included) admit that, if it wasn’t for the first 2 programming courses, we wouldn’t have understood a thing if we were to learn OOP from the teacher we had this semester. The teacher even has some problems with the fact that we were taught OOP before the OOP course by another teacher (in the DSA course).

The course - facts:

• When I got my final grade, I noticed that… work during the year does not count. Did you think that the laboratories count? You are naive if you do this. I admit, I was naive and I really tried to do my best, burning out valuable neurons. You just have to do the laboratories to be allowed to enter the exam. It doesn’t matter how well you do them (it’s pure logic, isn’t it?).
  Above all, we even had a test paper at the middle of the term (which we weren’t told if it is a midterm or not, untill we got the results. The teacher: Did I say it is a midterm? It is not a midterm. You’ll still have everything for the final exam.).
• the lectures for this course were horrible. We (all students) noticed that it is very difficult for us to follow the teacher showing us Java. It’s all nice to use an on screen projector to show up code, documentation and all, but it was all put in a big/great mess. There was a big problem with wording the course. Ideas were started, paused, broke into pieces, restarted so many times, that the course could really give you a terrible headache. Lots of the students abandoned the idea of participating at the lectures. It so happened that the teacher held his lecture in front of 5 to 20 students (out of ~130 in the entire series*) every time. There was a day when only one student was present at the course for an hour. His lectures were something like: see this… and this… oh.. and there’s something I’ve recently discovered in… but the thing there is… where were we? eh, nevermind… let’s see what else we have here.. oh.. ok.. this one is about… do you remember that… oh… and there’s that thing… I hope you understood that no normal human being could resist much at those lectures.
• The fact that some of the Data Structures and Algorithms course had some OOP lectures might have been a disadvantage for us. The teacher said one time that it favours some other series* and not ours - this might be because the DSA course has OOP lectures only in our series. This made the teacher think that we already know some OOP (which is true for some of us). Sometimes it went so off around an idea that we couldn’t understand what point he was trying to make. He assumed we already know what he was thinking about (but hey, we’re not reading minds) and skipped some steps. Asking for clarification possibly got you closer to the facts, but still, there was more. When he finally explained in detail, he wandered why we didn’t understand him… Well… GUESS WHY? (see above point).

The good thing about this course is the fact that it allowed us to spend some school hours thinking of Java (considering a very busy schedule). I’ve also done a project in Java during this year, because of ease in development and deployment. I don’t know if I was successful in this project because the way the teacher taught, or because I struggled to understand something for myself. I’ve also applied some things which I’ve learned by myself and heard of before coding in Java. Ever since this semester started I’ve been trying to convince myself that Java is something in a programmers world. Why so? Every time I heard the teacher, I was shown more bad points for Java. The teacher was a bad PR person for Java. It is a bit sad that a person, the teacher in this case, can induce a bad feeling about a programming language also because of the mess in his lectures.

I am slowly realizing that there must be something better than Java. I found some strange things happening inside. I am starting to believe C# might be closer to my dreams (I haven’t seen much C# code, but it is capable of some things missing in Java). The Royalty Free License of C# is a bit scary. Besides this, I want multiplatform. There’s still much to learn out there. Programming languages evolve every day. Each one is addapted for a particular application. Software engineers must be multi-oriented for better adaptation.

* we are organized into groups of 25-30 students and 5 groups make up a series.

Update: it seems that future OOP exams got easier, the high-graders number was bigger; this reminds me of another great rule in life: relativity (the difficulty of the exam can vary depending on the date of your exam, relative to others’ exams)

For the old Windows users:
Doesn’t this look familiar?
I stumbled across that page and the toolbox screenshot imediately caught my attention.

If you don’t know… let me tell you what it looks like: the toolbox on that page looks like the toolbox of Microsoft Paint in Windows 3.1x.

If this was already known, sorry… but I didn’t know it
I wonder if Microsoft bought MacPaint from the authors? Notice that it was a MacPaint is a Macintosh application (as its name says).

What do you think about these figures (quote from the above page)?

It’s interesting to note that MacPaint was a rather small program by today’s standards, but I guess that it had to be to run in the Mac’s one eighth of a megabyte of memory. The finished MacPaint consisted of 5,804 lines of Pascal code, augmented by another 2,738 lines of assembly language, which compiled into less than .05 megabytes of executable code.

Impressive, isn’t it?… It can’t be Microsoft

I wish I had a Smart Computer Power Source which would act like a 1-2 sec UPS during a Power Failure.

Power Failed 2 times today. Very odd. Each time it took less than 1 sec. The lights went down and up… and that was it. All the computers got reseted, except for the laptop (guess why? ) and surprisingly my old computer (P3 450MHz) which is running as a LAN server.

I don’t need a full-blown UPS. Or… maybe I do, but I don’t find the immediate use of it since I already use a Power Surge protected sockets. I don’t want the computers to reset at each minor (micro) power failure. I want them to support a 1-2 sec failure. I personally believe there are some better (simpler) ways of overcoming this kind of problems instead of attaching a backup battery to the power source… future will tell.