Today at 7:56am, Michael Halcrow said: >I wound up implementing my SQL statement parser/optimizer for Dr. Ng's >database class entirely in Ruby, foregoing any hope of getting any >support at all from the TA's. ... >The best tool for the job is not always whatever the lab writeup, or >the TA, recommends. Just be sure to check with the professor first to >make sure it's okay to ``deviate''. :-)
Amen. After I learned perl, I did nearly all (if not all) of my homework assignments in perl rather than C++ or whatever else they were "recommending", always with the teacher's permission, of course. My profs didn't care, but made it clear since they and the TA didn't know perl, they wouldn't be able to give much partial credit if it didn't work completely right. But that never came into play, fortunately. :) When all you have is a C++ hammer, everything starts looking like a nail. What you need is to get yourself a great swiss army knife/Leatherman, like perl, python, ruby, etc., and use a screwdriver or a blade when appropriate. Then you can just sit back and watch the other students (and usually the TAs) trying to build something with only a hammer. If one language was the right tool for every job, there'd only be one language... :) Lately at the UofU they've been trying to diversify the undergrads a bit by having them learn at least 2-3 different languages, rather than just doing everything in C++. So for a while they did Scheme for the first year classes, C++ second year, and Java in some classes. I still don't understand why they don't teach people a good "rapid prototyping" language, like perl/python/ruby. Then people can still have the experience of building things from scratch, but without having to spend all their evenings and weekends doing it. Mac -- Mac Newbold MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.macnewbold.com/ ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
