Code::Blocks Forums

User forums => General (but related to Code::Blocks) => Topic started by: scubanator87 on August 22, 2007, 02:30:07 pm

Title: Ignorant Professor
Post by: scubanator87 on August 22, 2007, 02:30:07 pm
So im currently enrolled in "Engineering Problem Solving with C++," and the professor "requires" us to use crap MS VS.

So I send him an email:

Hello Professor,
>
>       I was wondering how heavily we have to use visual studio. I don't
> us MS Windows as my primary OS and am much more comfortable using
> something like Code Blocks IDE to do my C++ in. Is it going to be a
> problem if i use a  gcc compiler?

Here is his reply:

Hi Stephen,

I want you to be in synch with everyone in the course, including the
TAs, your project partner, and me.  So you will need to use Visual
Studio.   We are just going to scratch the surface of using Visual
Studio, so it should not be difficult for you.

Thanks.  ... Dr. B.

Now if you can read 2 thing wrong; he cant use spell check, and that his answer gets me no where.

So I reply back:

I'm sorry however, that doesn't really answer my question. Let me rephrase,
> are we going to be using any thing specific to visual studio. Personally I
> could just use a text editor and a compiler, however this is obviously not
> the best approach for everyone. Thank you.

Now thinking that I have made things clear, he replies with:

Hi Stephen,

When we get into writing modular programs, the TAs may want you to
turn in your entire Visual Studio project zipped up.  This will
probably be easier for them to grade.

... Dr. B.

Now obviously im getting no where. So at this point im just going to ignore him and use the awesome-ness that is C::B

So thank you C::B team for bringing us This totally rad IDE that is Code::Blocks!
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: JGM on August 22, 2007, 02:37:06 pm
That was funny :D
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: thomas on August 22, 2007, 02:52:27 pm
When we get into writing modular programs, the TAs may want you to
turn in your entire Visual Studio project zipped up.  This will
probably be easier for them to grade.
So at this point im just going to ignore him and use the awesome-ness that is C::B
You're obviously joking :)

If your teaching assistants and your professor want to see a Visual Studio project, and you don't give them one, then what almost certainly will happen will be you failing the course, easy as that.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: scubanator87 on August 22, 2007, 04:17:06 pm
nah in class he said today we will be submitting them as "zip files" lol i wonder what they will do when i throw them a .tar.gz?
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: TDragon on August 22, 2007, 05:05:26 pm
Give you a choice between submitting a zip file and failing the assignment, most likely...
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: rcoll on August 22, 2007, 05:40:10 pm
nah in class he said today we will be submitting them as "zip files" lol i wonder what they will do when i throw them a .tar.gz?


What will you do when you go to work for an engineering company that has standarized all their projects using MS VC?  Will you still insist on using a non-standard (to your boss, anyway) IDE like C::B?  Seems like a good way to lose you job during the initial evaluation ("probabtion") period.

Ringo
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: MortenMacFly on August 22, 2007, 05:44:58 pm
What will you do when you go to work for an engineering company that has standarized all their projects using MS VC?  Will you still insist on using a non-standard (to your boss, anyway) IDE like C::B?
I do it. Of course I don't tell anybody and have a "MSVC interface" to the outside world. ;-) :lol: :lol: :lol:
With regards, Morten.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: Roman on August 22, 2007, 07:08:58 pm
Hi there!

2 scubanator87:
Man, I don't think I can/shall teach You but You should feel the difference between job and fun. When You will hire plenty of coders to work for Your company it will be possible to force them using C::B.

2 all:
Let me share with You my non-professional opinion:

There are plenty of projects that use MSVC. Thera are bunch of people that like C::B. It is difficult for them to make love with these VC projects because they (projects) can't be debugged with C::B.

Personally I would like C::B to be widely used by coders. Much more than 50% of them are using VC. So the C::B's way to stars lies through the full support of MS compiler. I have searched through forums and didn't find any topics saying "CDB rulez! I use it and I'm happy!" or sth.

Is anyone aware of a good way to debug VC programs? If so, I believe the answer should be on the WIKI. Any way - I would be thankful if someone explains what is the situation with this topic.

Best Regards,
Roman


Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: mitsukai on August 22, 2007, 08:19:04 pm
nobody will say "CDB rulez! I use it and I'm happy!" because C::B are mostly professional C++ programmers, and mature.

and to the OP, saying this u should get back to kinder garden, and programming is not for you.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: Roman on August 22, 2007, 09:14:19 pm
nobody will say "CDB rulez! I use it and I'm happy!" because C::B are mostly professional C++ programmers, and mature.

and to the OP, saying this u should get back to kinder garden, and programming is not for you.

Man!   :)
I mean by "CDB" a debugger that is used to debug VC code. By cited sentence I have meant that CDB+C::B pair does not work well.
I'm trying to get what is the connection between "CDB rulez! I use it and I'm happy!", "mostly professional" and "kinder garden" but fail. Coud You please help me in understanding Your concept?

With Regards,
Roman
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: Seronis on August 23, 2007, 02:41:28 pm
Roman dont be so quick to take offense.  All his point made was since most C::B users are more professional and not learners (im just a learner) then they all hate CDB so they wouldnt be happy.  Nothing against you. 

And the kindergarden comment was noted as being aimed at the OP not you.  And it was in reference to him being immature and not being willing to follow class guidelines for the same of imperialism of his own preference.

Again nothing against _you_ personally.  =-)
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: johne53 on August 23, 2007, 06:46:10 pm
I'm quite new to C::B - just using it for my first project. Previously I'd used MS Visual Studio for 8 years. I don't know why you think it's crap - it's a fantastic development environment. Yes, it's tailored towards writing for Windows but Microsoft doesn't deny that, does it?

I love C::B to bits and I'll soon be using it as my IDE of choice but that doesn't make me in some way superior to other developers. Nor am I arrogant enough to think that everyone else in the world is out of step, apart from me. If learning VC++ is part of your curriculum (however small a part) who are you to tell your professor that you're prepared to accept this part of the curriculum but not that part? If you want to pass the course you must work on the assignments as they are set for you - not on some other assignments that you happen to think are superior. Keep your mind open if you want to pass your exams.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: Roman on August 23, 2007, 08:30:20 pm
Roman dont be so quick to take offense.  All his point made was since most C::B users are more professional and not learners (im just a learner) then they all hate CDB so they wouldnt be happy.  Nothing against you. 

And the kindergarden comment was noted as being aimed at the OP not you.  And it was in reference to him being immature and not being willing to follow class guidelines for the same of imperialism of his own preference.

Again nothing against _you_ personally.  =-)

2 mitsukai: Sorry for misunderstanding :)
2 Seronis: Thank You for explanation :)

I'm a learner too - why do they hate CDB?

Best Regards,
Roman

Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: Seronis on August 24, 2007, 02:50:38 pm
It has been _quite_ some time since i tried (since i no longer play with vstudio.net) but i never got the vc debugger to work with code blocks.  Could be that It was while i was so new at C::B (i still mostly am) or that its not even possible.  I didnt try hard and just did what a friend suggested and not use the vc tools but got mingw instead.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: johne53 on August 24, 2007, 04:52:14 pm
As far as I've been able to tell, Microsoft's debugger is an integrated part of the IDE. It's not a separate executable, like GDB is to GCC. Therefore, you're never really going to make it work seamlessly with Code::Blocks. However, I believe it's "semi-integratable" in the sense that you can launch Visual Studio from within C::B, so you can edit & compile in one IDE whilst debugging in the other. Fortunately, Visual Studio is clever enough to realize when a file gets changed outside the IDE so, in practice, it can be made to work quite well. In fact there are other advantages too - since Visual Studio has an excellent resource editor that's very tightly integrated with MFC.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: rickg22 on August 24, 2007, 06:06:02 pm
Scubanator:

Ask the professor for a deal. Since you're a proficient C++ programmer right now, ask him to give you a final and make the project in C::B. Later you can convert it to VC++. Ta-da! :D

Anyway this remembers of a computing professor i had in high school. He gave me a 90% instead of a 100% because i answered "DIR /S" (command for listing with subdirectories) instead of "DIR/S" (without space). Both approaches worked, but he INSISTED that his approach was the CORRECT ONE!  :o Can you believe that?

Stupid professors :P (can you see the irony in this statement?)
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: stefanos_ on August 24, 2007, 09:00:23 pm
Scubanator my friend I understand you, trust me / believe me..I perfectly do!!! Let me tell you my story. It's sounds similar to yours. But please, do not do my mistake.

The reason I quit college it's because of a professor who had the knowledge of everything but lacked the charisma to "transmit" it to anyone. Plus he was the only one who was teaching all the important courses (C++, Assembly, Operating Systems, Data Structures etc) so with no chance I was able to pass :/ Honestly, financially he destroyed me. He was a genius I must admit that. He knew and still knows a lot, but still he uses his graduation knowledge and not what exists at present. To give you a hint of my situation, he had a special way to "teach" C++ with methods of C...exclusively!!! Yeap...that's right!

I was telling him to use the method of <iostream> instead of <iostream.h> so he may use namespaces for his convenience because that's the proper / new ANSI / ISO Standard way (of course for portability too) and he was insisting to use C ways not to mention he was not changing his mind that his method is totally wrong.

 - You know how many times he was displaying the output with something like this: "printf(%d...etc);"?
 - He couldn't accept the fact that "using namespace std;" actually work with C++! Because of that I told him a few bad things and since then he hated me because of that. "Sir, what floor are we right now? Fifth Stefanos why? Because what you say right now is "OK guys if you jump from fifth floor and try bunging jumping without a rope it will be perfectly safe for you, go and try it". Am I right?" Reaction: GET OOOOOUT!!!

His personal quote: Guys come on! You are Computer Science for God's name.
My reply: Sir you are mistaken. We are not Computer Science yet. We came here to become one! So make us..help us to become one!

That's my story.

My personal advice goes like this:

 - Study lots of good books (valuable references, I may give examples to everyone)
 - Learn from your mistakes and move on with your life.
 - When you have made a mistake be very happy because SUPRISE :) You have gain extra knowledge with research to similar errors.
 - Apply the Musician's Rule: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE and that is everyday.
 - Best Time to practice? After 21:00. Most of the time you may practicing your multitasking procedure too without realizing it (programming_late_at_night() == INSOMNIA()). You know what I'm saying..;)
 - I used to combine Heavy Metal with programming but for some reason was not working :/ I tried something really awkward and since then works like a charm...[come on guys stop laughing...] chill out songs keeps my balance [especially Celine Dion]. High brain speed with low tones' music gives me inspiration for discovering / digesting new functions - classes etc.
 - I learn whatever I want on my own. Whatever I have learnt until now is with hard work, real sweat . No one was born with knowledge. Knowledge is each man's mind adventure written down on a piece of paper (or whatsoever nowadays with technology).
 - Follow each example was given to you from all guys here and go with your teacher's way. Do not fight him back with emails and bad words. Show him your work on test, participation, project(s) and if you want at later time you may send him an exercise of yours and like that I am sure he will get the message.

Sorry for the "short" reply.

Btw forgive your professor for his behavior. I am sure he has child issues. Most probably he was bitten from others a lot of times when he was young. He didn't choose to be like that. He was born to inherit this "gift".

Regards,

Stefanos_

P.S: If I am not mistaken, dir/s does not work under Windows 3.x until 98SE. Maybe he was using 98? :D I am not sure but do not get offended like that. I have tried somewhere a few years ago (dir/w/s) and didn't work; so I had to add the whitespace between them to make it work :/ Maybe that was the issue.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: mitsukai on August 25, 2007, 02:23:36 pm
he is right there must be spaces in cmd lines, doesnt neccesarily have to be wrong not doing so, but i think its the right approach.


i agree with you teaching C in C++... do i need to say more?
u should have gone to to the principle or whoever will listen to you, maybe even the direction, that he is teaching C or old C++ standards and not C++.
im sure the direction board would have listened you, especially if you tell them that he did not want to listen to you to correct the mistakes, a good professor will listen to students and research what is wrong and right.
you said he had "knowledge" in your post i sense otherwise :)
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: stefanos_ on August 25, 2007, 07:50:37 pm
Mitsukai my friend I just mentioned the 0.0001% of my story. Trust me, about what happened next not a lot of people knows. He throw me the sponge in the face and I went to the Principle, Direction and the like to complain about him.

You want to know their answer? You haven't seen anything, you haven't heard anything!

So I quit from college and I start work as Systems Administrator for 2 years and right now I work as S.E.O for a Web Services company. Everything is about experience, trust me.

About his knowledge: He is the only human being I know that was active in lots of Research Projects about X-Rays, Ultra-Sound, 3D Image Rendering with Real Images, plus had the time to [supposely] teach, raise family, bla bla bla.

The guy was so psychotic with technology that was walking with coordinations of X's and Y's. Oh another thing :D listen to this! when we were doing something wrong or asked something innocently dumb he was shouting "Invalid, Error" :DDDD We talking about SERIOUS ISSUES!

Waiting for your comments :D

Stefanos
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: JGM on August 25, 2007, 08:26:13 pm
Well I'm happy to know that I'm not the only one who went thru this kind of situation.

I took some classes with a professor that had some doctorate in computer Engineering and he was always improvising the class. He doesn't even know programming. That professor was only a doctorate title.

I was really frustrated beacuse I wanted to learn. So is true, I got to buy books and study by my self. Today with 22 years I'm still learning. Just won a title on computer science, after all, some universities teach, and others just give you the title, you're on your own. Is this world some times is needed a title to success.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: mitsukai on August 25, 2007, 11:34:53 pm
hi stefanos. science is my hobby to, but not that it effects my social life as u mentioned like your teacher has, its a bit disturbing, i have had a few class mates in my life and they sound kinda the same as your professor (and they were proven a bit mentally retarded).

i read alot of articles on wikipedia(they arent always correct :( shamefully) and on other websites.
specifically because i have always wanted to design practical free energy(environmental friendly and infinite). but trust me, there is nothing hard about X-Rays, sound devices, or image rendering, the problem is knowing-how.
if a person (no matter how disturbing he is) invents what i have always dreamed of he will be my hero(and this goes alot deeper than "rocket science")

its really a shame some professors no matter how disturbing they are are alway right in shool or universe or college, i have also experienced this. but one mentor(or whatever his role was) got fired , but i still quited that school to go to a better one.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: johne53 on August 26, 2007, 08:05:53 am
Free energy is probably asking a bit much. Almost nothing worth having is free. Even the beauty of nature takes time to develop. The best you can probably hope for is cheap energy.

In Britain (where I live) we suffer some of the world's most punitive taxes for vehicle fuels (petrol / diesel etc). Furthermore, it used to be illegal to convert your vehicle to run on anything other than petrol or diesel (it was considered to be tax evasion). However, our government has relaxed this legislation for people who want to brew their own fuels. Fast food take aways use high quantities of vegetable oil. Every so often they need to pay someone to take it away and dispose of it. Some enterprising individuals have realise that if you blend the used oil with caustic soda (NaOH) you can produce a fuel that will run your vehicle. The only problem is that the exhaust fumes make your car smell like a hamburger van!! Also, you can only do it successfully with older vehicles. New vehicles with engine management systems etc are too precisely engineered to use the fuel.

There are people over here fuelling their vehicles almost for free. Of course, if it catches on it would need a big rise in fast food outlets!!!
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: mitsukai on August 26, 2007, 01:48:47 pm
free energy exists. but its not infinite or its not practical

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy

Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: stefanos_ on August 26, 2007, 03:38:11 pm
I would like to thank all of you guys for your valuable replies.

The weird thing though into my eyes is that instead of encouraging scubanator not to go against his professor(s)' requests we started sharing our own personal experiences and "adventures" and we have kind of lost the control of discussion.

I think I must apologize to scubanator for that. My apologies for once again.

Scubanator - Here is again my advice (revised but conceptually the same) separated into valuable steps:

 - Try not to come into collision / friction with your professors, I know they are human beings too and I know by first-hand that they do make mistakes too. You should take the advantage of it and learn more from their mistakes by not repeating them yourself.

 - Always search on your own about what your professor says or teaches you, but first gather all your questions regards to the subject you have being taught and go to his / her office by asking further explanation, just to make it clearer into your eyes.
Now, if he still teaches you the wrong way, learn his way, temporarily though, to take the grade you deserve; also keep your sources with proper and valid results / answers about the subject of the course and always search more to clarify your doubts if there any.

 - Go to forums, blogs, IRC, Search Engines, and find solutions by discussing with people your questions through questions. I cannot accept excuses like, "who knows", "my situation is extraordinary difficult and you cannot help me", and the like.

 - Work hard, study exhaustively using many resources, books, Internet, and whatever other kind of sources you might have available.

 - PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

Here are the books I have on my possession [Long Live Amazon :D]:

 - C++ Primer Plus 4th Edition (Stephen Prata) - Amazing for newbies.
 - Object Oriented Programming in C++ (Nicolai M. Jossutis) - I cannot comment to something so beautiful. It's well written like...Shakespeare being Programmer :D
 - The C++ Standard Library (Nicolai M. Jossutis) - A must have for all programmers who wants to know how to use Standard Libraries to help themselves for portability (and not only).
 - Standard C++ IOStreams and Locales (Langer, Kreft) - I received it on Friday and as far as I have read thoroughly it's a must have book for advanced programmers to learn how to use all classes, functions, and libraries to make their program safer, faster, and robust. Explains all IOStreams and Locales in depth [extremely detailed].
 - Algorithms in C++ (Sedgewick) - The author of this book separated it into two parts, 1 to 4 for examples, and the second book is part 5 to show graphs in detail. Whoever loves Data Structures must have it. Explains amazing algorithms that reduces a program's memory in such degree that you wouldn't believe it.
 - C++ Templates (Josuttis, Vandevoorde) - A book that explains C++ templates in depth, a proper way how to use them, how they should work, and why programmers should start using them if have not done it yet.

 - The C++ Programming Language (Bjarne Stroustrup) - The Creator of C++ explaining everything in detail about his language. As a love and respect to this language you should have this book for respect. I have found inside programming humor too ;)
 - The Annotated C++ Reference Manual (Bjarne Stroustrup) - Another book by master creator of C++ explaining his language based on ANSI standardization of the language plus annotations and commentary. I think was the first official C++ reference manual for the time was printed if I am not mistaken.
 - The Design and Evolution of C++ (Bjarne Stroustrup) - Dr. Stroustrup was asked by a friend through email if he had written a book about how C++ was designed and later on evolution. Well, his request became true. Just read it and you will start imagining images of the whole story like a documentary in your mind. It' an amazing programming story. Just read it.

Lots of other books will be purchased in the future (with God's will) and trust me scubanator; these books were not recommended to me by any of my college professors, but from ordinary people who work hard on their own to learn this language on their spare time.

You have a dream? YOU will make it come true! You should never, ever give up for anyone and for anything. ALWAYS try your best and if you bend, be happy for it. If you feel abandoned by society do not worry about it. You are not alone; you have us. The programming society that loves sharing knowledge. Because our knowledge is our power. Soon enough you will arise up again stronger than ever and you will start quoting yourself: No more words, just actions.

Your dreams are your missions. Accomplish that and you will gain your harmony.

Regards,

Stefanos_

P.S: I hope you find these books interesting.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: mitsukai on August 26, 2007, 06:19:52 pm
note that u should also be carefully with what books you read, they might not be up-to-date or they might contain wrong information.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: stefanos_ on August 27, 2007, 01:05:01 pm
according to bjarne stroustrup ANSI C++ [C++98] will be compatible with C++0x with minor changes. Also he mentioned that even the minor changes won't be totally removed but would still be compatible with the additional extra coding lines.
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: ascxaxsvcbsxbbqvcxqsbcvxs on August 27, 2007, 04:32:50 pm
Scubanator:

Ask the professor for a deal. Since you're a proficient C++ programmer right now, ask him to give you a final and make the project in C::B. Later you can convert it to VC++. Ta-da! :D

Anyway this remembers of a computing professor i had in high school. He gave me a 90% instead of a 100% because i answered "DIR /S" (command for listing with subdirectories) instead of "DIR/S" (without space). Both approaches worked, but he INSISTED that his approach was the CORRECT ONE!  :o Can you believe that?

Stupid professors :P (can you see the irony in this statement?)

@Scubanator: rickg22 is right, smart professors usually agree to negociate, except if the school rules forbids it.

One year long ago (one year only, sadely) i went to the programming teacher at the beginning of the year, and showed him what i had already programmed (not related to the school). He realized i already knew all coming year lessons, so he proposed to give me straight 19/20 at each exam, plus the authorization, during the exams, to do what i wanted for myself in the room next to the exam room.
There were a transparent wall between the two rooms. Maybe the best experience i ever had in school: spending all the exams doing what i wanted  8), and all students eyes on me...  :shock:

Conclusion: don't hesitate to negociate with professors. Some could be stupid, but some easily do favor to some students.
Some absolutely want to be considered as knowing more than all students, but others don't mind recognizing the students know more.
If you are nice with them, you could get a lot from them!  :lol:
Title: Re: Ignorant Professor
Post by: rickg22 on August 27, 2007, 06:17:49 pm
The guy was so psychotic with technology that was walking with coordinations of X's and Y's. Oh another thing :D listen to this! when we were doing something wrong or asked something innocently dumb he was shouting "Invalid, Error" :DDDD We talking about SERIOUS ISSUES!

Stefanos

This reminds me of that movie with Sean Connery, "finding Forrester". This teacher was being a bad@$$ with his students because he got frustrated at Forrester for ruining his writing career. Usually teachers vent up their frustrations with their students. I'm not saying it's ok... it's just part of human nature.

When an authority is this intolerant, I just can't stand it. I have to get even.  I go with higher authorities until they're beyond my reach. Then I go to the press or write a blog.