On Fri, 06 Aug 2004 09:55:32 -0600 (MDT), Mac Newbold <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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. :)
Okay, now I have to chime in on this one. One of my classes required a basic web server as the first lab. I wrote mine in Python (with the professor's full knowledge, of course). One line: SimpleHTTPServer.start() or something too easy like that. Full points for me. I figure you may as well learn something if you're going to be doing busywork, so in Econ 110 I used OpenOffice Calc to do scatter plots and Draw to do freehand plots even though the professor openly mocked the thought of using a computer for Econ homework. He said that would be "Stupid". It was harder at first, but I learned a lot more than just econ and by the end it was easier (I let the spreadsheet do all the math for me). I also wrote an entire trouble-tracking system for my DB class in JSTL[1] just to see if I could do it. Not one line of Java in the entire app. We're paying a lot of money for our education (or someone else is) so we might as well get whatever out of it we want. -- Andrew Jorgensen [1] JSP Standard Tag Library <http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/jstl/index.jsp> ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
