I hate programming

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>AHHH, this quarter (the one I just finished) I took my first programming class (Fortran). If you've heard of it that's pretty amazing cause I never heard of it before this class. Anyway, I struggle with the class and I hate how these kids already have past experience just blow through the tests and homework while I'm sitting there for hours and still can't figure it out. Its so discouraging. Even worse--our first midterm the avg was HIGHER than what the teacher expected, Midterm 2--he made it HARDER and <em>still</em> the class managed to score above the previous mean. ARGH. To make matters worse, he admitted that he intentionally made it harder b/c it wanted the avg. around 50 %. He did say that he was impressed by how well the class was doing. The final was AWFUL! He lets us use cheat sheets (we put info and other stuff on it) but the test tests your ability to think and this didn't help at all. I got back my score and I was only 1 point above the mean. I'm, kinda sad since I was above the mean for the first two midterms. It doesn't help that this final is worth more then the 2 previous tests. </p>

<p>ARGH, at least i only need one quarter for my major!!!!!! </p>

<p>On the last day of lecture, he said that he was very satisfied with everyone and that he would "write letters of recommendations--don't hesitate to ask!" <---that's good think right?</p>

<p>I hope I get a B. It was AWFUL, it felt like drowning/swimming up stream. The worst part was that there were times where I could NOT figure it out! I'm very logical at thinking and good with math and science, but coming in as a noob was like going to run a marathon w/o your shoes/water. It was frusterating but at least I'm done. </p>

<p>I'm a first year and this was probably one of those classes (for some people, which almost included me) where they got their first C's in college. Dang its a weird feeling to struggle.</p>

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<p>Sounds like my lunatic professor and my boring ass class. Maybe it’s a programming thing. He did the exact same thing you said your instructor did: gave the class average and was quite happy that it was in the 50s as well, said that he would make the next exam harder, and then started quoting Star Wars. </p>

<p>Personally, I find the “I know more than you” complex far more irritating. It seems like people in programming are always trying to one-up each other. </p>

<p>In regards to exams, I think the fact that the majority of students are performing poorly reflects more on the instructor than the student.</p>

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<p>Overall, I will give my teacher credit. He was very helpful (same with the TA). I basically had to learn eveyrthing in 10 wks which left little time to absorb/let the material sink in. </p>

<p>Oh i’m just glad to be done !</p>

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<p>OMG</p>

<p>i almost made an “i hate programming” thread the other day after i suffered through a javascript mortgage calculator for like 3 days straight…i feel your pain…</p>

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<p>^ Thank you! </p>

<p>I think most of the hate for learning (not necessarily for programming) comes from being “forced” to learn it or learning it so fast that you never absorb the material. XD</p>

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<p>welcome to computer science</p>

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<p>I’m taking my first computer science class, and Javascript drives me crazy. It takes over my life whenever an assignment is due haha.</p>

<p>Fortran, lol. My mom says that she learned that in the Soviet Union when she was in college, which might have been 20 to 30 years ago?</p>

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<p>Being one point above the mean must be horrible. Really, they should design tests so that everyone can be in the top 20%.</p>

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<p>To be honest, Fortran just sucks. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s not really a good place to start learning about programming. Something like Python would’ve been a more appropriate starting point, and I’m guessing a lot of the people in your class with prior experience did not have such a rough introduction to the field.</p>

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<p>Programming is weird like that. I have a natural aptitude for it. I’m in a c++ class right now and even though I’ve never coded in c++ it feels like it is dragging. Other people who don’t have that natural ability are really struggling and we’ve gone from a class of about 26 to a class of about 10. My grade in that class after 6 labs and a test is 99.99 (I lost 2/3rds of a point on the test for writing a dot instead of an asterisk for multiplication). I think our course average is in 70s. I guess it is one of those love it or hate it things.</p>

<p>You’re lucky your school offers Fortran. That’s something I need to learn because I’m interested in computational physics, but it isn’t offered by my school. I’ll be teaching myself Fortran over the summer.</p>

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<p>I wouldn’t bother, it’s pretty outdated and physicists don’t use it. Also, like I said, my mom used it in the Soviet Union in the late 70s.</p>

<p>Also, I don’t quite see what you have to brag about. How well you do in a class doesn’t say anything about your intelligence, but perhaps about your school.</p>

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<p>The problem with many introductory programming classes is that instead of focusing on the concepts of programming, students are forced to try and learn unwieldy syntax. In the process, they miss what’s important.</p>

<p>I almost think that one’s very first programming class should spend a few weeks working in just pseudo-code so that students can get used to the idea of programming. Python is great as well in terms of readability and lack of overhead. Advanced students should be able to move up to a more challenging class, but those just being introduced to programming need all the help they can get…difficult-to-learn languages do not help, and in fact hurt students’ learning potential.</p>

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Fortran isn’t used in computational physics? That’s news to me.</p>

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<p>Fortran? Really? That’s one way to make a novice programmer never want to program again.</p>

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<p>you guys do know that javascript is not a programming language.</p>

<p>Fortran is still heavily used, and we are awaiting Fortress, which seems promising.</p>

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<p>So this thread is a little intimidating, since I’m going into college as a computer science major without any prior programming knowledge. You guys have any advice for the people like me? Or is doom and gloom all there is? :)</p>

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<p>No need to worry. This thread owner is expressing his own situation and feelings on programming. And more, maybe programming is not his major subject. Believe there is always a way for you.</p>

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<p>^^it’s sure as hell not my major subject. but my professor is actually really amazing & pretty famous in the CS world, apparently–he’s a great teacher & spends most of his time teaching us concepts rather than syntax; i just suck at comp sci haha.</p>

<p>also, javascript is certainly a programming language. it’s for web programming, which still happens to be programming.</p>

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<p>^^Agreed, what makes web programming not programming? </p>

<p>I’m just not a quantitative thinker, so programming is harder for me. Still, it’s definitely an important skill to have, so don’t hold yourself back from trying it out just because of stories of it being hard or easy for certain people.</p>

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<p>I’m not stopping you from learning it, I’m just advising you to look into the matter a little further before you possibly waste your time. All I hear is that Fortran was used, but not much anymore. You’re better off sticking to Matlab or C++ or C. My info comes from both parents who are scientists, and a boyfriend who’s a physicist.</p>

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<p>“To be honest, Fortran just sucks. I don’t know how else to put
it. It’s not really a good place to start learning about programming.”</p>

<p>It was a fine language along with COBOL many years ago. A language
well-suited for the days of punch-cards, line printers and magtapes.</p>

<p>“I’ll be teaching myself Fortran over the summer.”</p>

<p>Fortran is pretty simple compared to modern languages.</p>

<p>“The problem with many introductory programming classes is that instead
of focusing on the concepts of programming, students are forced to try
and learn unwieldy syntax.”</p>

<p>There are a lot of different approaches to teaching CS or programming.
In Computing courses, they try to teach some math, algorithms and
hardware along with programming.</p>

<p>“you guys do know that javascript is not a programming language.”</p>

<p>Someone forgot to tell that to Brendan Eich:</p>

<p>[I came to Netscape in April 1995, after seven years at Silicon
Graphics and three years at MicroUnity Systems Engineering.
Netscape was about a year old then and was looking for someone
to work on a scripting language or some kind of language inside
the browser that could be used to automate parts of a web page
or make a web page more dynamic. Java had been around for five
years at First Person and Sun, and had been retooled for the web
in late 1994. Netscape was the first Java licensee, so the issue
became: Can we do just Java, or do we need another language?]</p>

<ul>
<li>Brendan Eich, inventor of Javascript</li>
</ul>

<p>“javascript is certainly a programming language. it’s for web
programming, which still happens to be programming.”</p>

<p>You can run Javascript programs locally too. You can find the
source code for Mozilla’s implementation (ues, Brendan is still
running the show) online. If you look through the source code,
you’ll see a language interpreter augmented by a new nanojit
compilation engine for improved performance.</p>

<p>“I’m not stopping you from learning it, I’m just advising you to look
into the matter a little further before you possibly waste your
time. All I hear is that Fortran was used, but not much anymore.”</p>

<p>There are many languages out there which may not be in common use but
there’s always legacy code. You might have an old submarine with very
old computers or an old COBOL application that runs just fine on a
platform. I’ve done some engineering in a language called BLISS. There
are still a lot of large applications that run on BLISS middleware.</p>

<p>And then there’s this:</p>

<p>It’s true: The brain of NASA’s primary vehicle has the computational
power of an IBM 5150, that '80s icon that goes for $20 at yard
sales. According to NASA and IBM, the shuttle’s General Purpose
Computer (GPC) which controls, among other things, the entire launch
sequence is an upgrade of the 500-kilobyte computer the shuttle flew
with until 1991.</p>

<p>Such an antiquated computer works just fine for NASA. The shuttle
doesn’t need to support a powerful graphics engine or create
PowerPoint presentations or store MP3s. It focuses entirely on raw
functions - thrusters on, thrusters off - which, though mathematically
complex, don’t require the juice that a user interface like Windows
calls for. The GPC has flown so many missions with hardly a hiccup
that there’s no reason to replace it, even if it is just 0.005 percent
as powerful as an Xbox 360. Besides, a complete overhaul would be
horrendously expensive. The GPC’s software would have to be completely
reconfigured for a modern computer and tested until proven flawless.</p>

<p>For proof that you shouldn’t fix a space computer if it ain’t broke,
consider Russia’s Soyuz space capsule, which since 1974 has been
running Argon-16 flight-computer software with just six kilobytes of
RAM. In 2003 the Russians rewrote some of the spacecraft’s software,
which experts suspect led to its subsequent crash-landing in a desert
in Kazakhstan.</p>

<p>[Does</a> the Space Shuttle?s Computer Really Run on Just One Megabyte of RAM? | Popular Science](<a href=“http://www.popsci.com/node/31716]Does”>http://www.popsci.com/node/31716)</p>

<p>“My info comes from both parents who are scientists, and a boyfriend who’s a physicist.”</p>

<p>The world of programming is very, very wide and one would have to have a wide view of a wide variety of industries, government and academia to have a more complete picture.</p>