[Tutor] Shelve del not reducing file size

[Andreas Kostyrka]

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Alan Gauld wrote:
> "Andreas Kostyrka" <andreas at kostyrka.org> wrote
> 
>> was, that the only way to have more math courses would be to study
>> something with mathematics in the title *g*)
> 
> Thats true of most engineering courses.
> Although I studied Electrical engineering the only compulsory subject
> for each of the 5 years(if you took it to Masters) was math! You could
> actually drop all of the pure electricaltheory by fifth year but you 
> couldn't
> drop math... But thats because math is the language of enginering,
> regardless of whether its building bridges, oscillators or programs.
> You don't need much math to build a garden shed, but you need
> a lot to build the Tacoma Narrows bridge... Similarly you don't need
> much math to build a GUI friont end to a database, but you need
> quite a lot to build the control program for a nuclear reactor. (and 
> the
> consequences of getting it wrong are usually worse too!)

I would question even that one can write a good GUI frontend to a
database without the theory behind it. Database design has a number of
important theoretical foundations (relational algebra, normal forms),
and without understanding these, and their implications for your db
model, you might end up with a bad GUI.


> 
>> of many students that expected to learn "programming" was the fact, 
>> that
>> you were expected to know programming already.
> 
> Really? We had a pretty good basic Pascal course in first year. After
> that you knew how to program so after that it was just learning new
> languages so no need for extra training. Most of it after that was on

Well, the advanced stuff was there. But the Modula2 introduction to
programming was a joke, most students did not even understand the
concept of local variables and procedure parameters after one semester.
OTOH, I might be a bad judge on programming progress, at that time I was
young and a C++ tutor in the parallel introduction to programming course
at the second university in town ;)


> techniques like data structures, parallel processing, graphics, 
> relational
> data theory,  intrerruipt handling, assembler I/O techniques, 
> simulation
> and control theory etc etc. The stuff you need to design programs not
> write them.
> 
>> cPickle/Pickle question is AFAIR documented,
> 
> But not in a manner totally clear to a newbie. An experienced
> programmer will figure out that a C implementation is faster but
> what does that meabn when your only reference is a few weeks
> of Python? And why is there two modules if one is better? Why
> not just replace the Python one completely?

Well, here we come to the point where the complexity is higher than what
most newbies can grasp. But that's not really unique to programming or
Python, most high school level math courses do not teach the whole
truth. At least not in the beginning.

Andreas

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