Computer Science Education

A quine is a program that prints its own source code (without any access to it). Typically quines are obscure code that few people can understand, and when run, they print the same obscure code that few people can understand. I've seen a similar trait in CS-education. If you show students really bad code, the weak students fail (pass by compensation:)) and the good students begin to write really bad obscure code. They are trying to imitate their teachers habits, and doing a lot of damage in the process. You really have to be careful who you learn from.

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote the following

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

It's referred to in places as Clarkes Law. Performing magic is a great way to impress people, and leave them with a "Wow, how the f-ck did he do that?" feeling. Thats a great way to have your crowd feeling when they're leaving a magic show. You want them walking out the door begging you for an explanation, each offering their own incorrect guess as to where the rabbit was.

If you're trying to teach something, the rabbit should be damn obvious from beginning to end

This is something thats puzzling me lately. I whole heartedly agree with Joel Spolsky and many others that it's a bad idea for a comptuer science department to simply churn out students with a proficiency in Java, and zero skill in Computer Science or Software Engineering. But I don't know why...

For the last two years, I've tried to help out fourth year students by passing on whatever knowledge about theses that I have collected in the hope of improving their marks. I have seen many weak theses in my time, and I give a talk each year basically covering what not to do, and also what you must do. If you are by any means interested, the contents of my talk, and the accompanying handout are can be found here: http://www.minds.may.ie/~dez/sw-talk

Also of use are these two links

• How to pass your final year thesis project
• How to write a good research paper, and give a good research talk