CS 371P #1

This the first in a series of blogs, one per week for my Fall 2011 CS 371p class – for the 15 weeks. We’re to write about our experience in the class, what we like, don’t like, what we learned, anything cool or helpful etc. Two or three paragraphs per week for extra credit. No brainer.

What I like? Well, in my years as a software engineer I managed to never write a line of java code. So it’s nice to actually get a little java experience. I can see why people like it. Nice and clean, simple, very OOPish. Way, way simpler than C++ in terms of complexity and features, and correspondingly limited I suspect.

Also git. I’ve used several other SCCSs over the years including home grown, rcs, cvs, perforce, svn. I have been hearing about git and so it’s nice to git a little exposure to it as well. I love the new distributed model of git et al. Branching is painless and that is awesome. While hunting around for git info I came across a vid of Linus giving a git talk to some Google developers. Worth watching.

One thing that struck me about our first project is the emphasis on vocational skills. The project has us performing a few very basic tasks like issue tracking, source code control, documentation and a touch of project management. All tasks which are standard operating procedure in the professional world. Very vocational. Interesting. I gather that the CS department is responding to the software industry’s need for more capable software developers out of the box. I’m curious how that communication occurs.