Mircea Bardac /random_thoughts

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)

This was the last day of the semester. Tough semester, the toughest until now.

Readers of my blog probably noticed that I haven’t posted anything in the last 2 weeks or so. During the last 2 weeks students finsh seminars, take evaluation tests etc.

The week ending today was the most full week of my entire school life. I’ve never slept so little. I had to finish a project, present it, make 2x ~15pages homework, prepare exams & take them all in one week. Very short nights. Some of my colleagues even skipped some nights.

Only today I’ve had 2 final exams: Logical Design, Switching Theory and English. I could have done better - time wasn’t on my side. I have 4 more exams to think of, out of which 3 are really difficult.

Now, I guess I can think of some real sleep before starting to prepare for the remaining exams.

P.S. I’ve also did some computer related activities, which I plan to back-blog (blog with older dates, inspired by “backport”)

Friday, the 13th… May 2005.
… and I’m not superstitious.

It all started when the alarm set off. I remember setting it at 9:30 AM.
Woke up, turned on the computer (I was waiting for an e-mail with an essay for a presentation - had to burn it on a CD). Looked at the time: 7:35 AM. What tha?!?.. then.. it hit me! There was a recurrent alarm set at 7:30AM. Ok, that means 2 more hours for waking up and getting ready for this full day. (I will consider this a neutral event)

I should have been at the University at about 11:15 AM. The 2nd round of presentations for the English Scientific Session started at that time. Sometime later, at about 12:30, me and 3 more colleagues were scheduled for the Psychological Education Scientific Session.

I was all ready at about 10:30. I just needed to burn 2 CDs (one for English, one for Psychological Education) and print my English essay.
Magic happened then: the printer was out of ink (1st bad thing: -1). It was working perfectly less than 12 hours before, when my father printed some faxes.

Called my friend Liviu to ask him if he managed to print his essay in full colour, at a shop nearby. He answered the phone and I found out that “no, he couldn’t print it, but I could send my essay to him and print it black and white”. Ok, that will do - thanks Liviu once again. (1st good thing +1)

I got dressed up very nice in my navy blue suit, put a tie on - incredible speed (about 1-2 minutes) and rushed out. I was in a hurry, so Liviu suggested me I grab a cab, go over to him and get to the University together. Found an undecided cab driver (he didn’t know if he was occupied or not - a lady was waiting for somebody else which, surprisingly, appeared exactly when I was heading for the door of the cab). Took the next cab and.. surprise. That was the most expensive cab I’ve ever been to in my entire life. It costed me ROL 170,000 (that’s about EUR 4.5) to get to the University, when, normal way, it would have been 3 times cheaper. For that price I could have gotten a Mercedes to drive me to the University. (2nd bad thing -1)

We were there at 11:20 AM, only 5 minutes late. Everything was moving so slowly, that the beginning of the presentations was delayed for about 25 minutes. I will consider this the 2nd good thing (+1).

The English presentation I had was the worst presentation of my entire life.
Thinking back about that, I can only say that the main reason for failing to deliver a close to perfect presentation lack of preparation (derived from “lack of time”). What I am most upset about is that I destroyed the most well designed presentation I’ve ever had in my entire life. The name of the presentation is Always sell yourself. How to think like a CEO. A nice not very computer science related subject which literally required serious preparation on behalf of a computer-oriented person like me (it was a mix of ideas, maybe too many ideas, not very logical binding, requiring lots of support in order to glue the entire presentation). It was a bit full of text, but the concept was great. I might put it up online sometime. This would be the 3rd bad thing (-1).

The Psychological Education Scientific Session Presentation went good, I might even say very good. Everybody was pleased. This counts for the good things (3rd good thing +1).

The rest of the day was pretty good, except for the weird things still comming up.
Me and Liviu went to a seminar on Leadership at the Student Union (Casa de Cultura a Studentilor) Bucharest. It was pretty interesting.

We spent the rest of the day walking through Bucharest. Even if I was dressed formally, I felt very comfortable.

We got somewhere in the Revolution Square, where we saw the mayor of Bucharest - Adrian Videanu. He was waiting for somebody. We saw him, he saw us, we crossed the street and stopped in front of the National Art Museum, where a party was being held up. We saw many BMWs stopping by, high influence people in Romania, one ambassador - we later found out it was a charity party. While staying there, Mr. Videanu also crossed the street with his wife. He left his wife go ahead and when he got in front of us he turned towards us, greeted us, we greeted him, then he turned back and entered through the Museum’s gate, where everyone else was waying. I stopped for a moment. Then realised. The mayor has greeted me, when many other people was around us. We weren’t even close to the gate and I had no way/reason to enter, but I admit: I was dressed formaly. This goes with the good things: +1.

There were some other minor good bits which I skipped. Overall, after doing the calculations, this turned out to be a good day. Unfortunately, the English Presentation was a loss, especially for the design itself which I’ve managed to “downvalue” a lot.

Well, at least the mayor greeted me… and we might take a prize for the Psychological Education Presentation… weird day… I have to admit.

I was talking today to a colleague of mine about the reactions some of the students had at one of our courses. We have some difficult electronics classes. During one of courses we were shown on the on screen projector some electric schemas. One time they were a bit bigger than we usually had. Some of the students started “woaa…”-ing around. Then, everything got bigger. Imagine an almost global and fill of dissapointment”wooo…”.

I was thinking afterwards: what causes people to react that way? Ok, the answer would be the expanding schemas… but… what if?

What if, from the very beginning, we were given a computer motherboard lets say. People, you have to understand it!. A big “woooo..” would have followed. But, it would have been the only one if, afterwards, the teacher would have told us to go a bit lower into the structure of the motherboard. Now, please observe the amplifying stage, next to the power suply connector (this is purely imaginative, I have no idea where the stages are on the motherboard). Students would have said: Ah, ok, so we’re going to learn this tiny thing… should be easy… (compared to the entire motherboard). This way, during the entire course, the teacher would have got only one “woaaa…” - and that would be at the very beginning. On the same principle, research would have gone deeper into the structure, stopping at the level where the software engineer needs to stop (forgot to mention, we will be software engineers, not hardware engineers).

What currently happens goes like this:
Teacher: Students, here is the bi-polar transistor (we were told afterwards it is no longer used in computers because of too many disadvantages, but we still learn it, for A SEMESTER). Now, have a look at all these connection types…
Students: Woooo… (many formulas)
Teacher: Now, look… we can have 2 transistors in the same circuit!
Students: Wooooooo…
Teacher: … but.. don’t worry… we can make an equivalent for these 2 transistors…. we’ll replace them with only one…
Students: Phew…. Wooo.. more formulas…
Teacher: At the exam, you’ll have problems with only 4 transistors.
Students: “only”… wooo…
Teacher: We used to give problems with 5-6 transistors some years ago, but it took a long time solving the problems and students couldn’t finish because of this… oh.. and we also added saturated or blocked transistors.. to make the problems more fum
Students: what tha?!?!…. (we pretend didn’t hear the teacher)

So, what did I see there?
I saw that things got more complicated in a field which does not dirrectly affect software engineers. This is probably why these courses really stick to the memory of the computer science students as being the most difficult of the entire faculty.

What I was thinking was… what if everything was taught the other way around?
From BIG to small. From large circuits, to small parts.
We don’t need to know how the tiny transistor works in its every detail (=tons of formulas)! We will never create the transistor! (the bi-polar transistor is outdated anyway). We will never use it in creating a circuit board. In the worst case scenario we will have to take a look over an electric schema and think what happens there. But even then, we will be pretty smart not to stick our noses into what we don’t know and we will ask the qualified people.

This way, we will know better the inner workings of the computer, not at the electric components level, but a bit higher. As software engineers, we will work with modules. It will be almost the same, but on hardware level. Starting from the high-level interactions and going down to some-low-level interaction might prove a more efficient teaching method for this kind of courses.