h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

* finally manages to finish the Heisenberg Uncertainty donut after chasing it halfway around h2g2 *

Can I have an S3 please?

Hi Jo and everybody,

long time I was here, happy to be here again.

May I have a L2, please?

*hands over honey, s3 & l2*

Eat and enjoy...

Thanks a lot, Joanna!

Early morning syrup donut for me - get that sugar rush!

I need a honey doughnut.

Morning BB!

*Passes over a honey doughnut*

Thanks Croz.
Today I've had one great lecture, and I'll have another around 3pm. History's much more fun than law.

I had one at 10, my last today is at 12.

That would normally be good, but most of the remaining time up until Christmas is taken up with nasty horrible tutorial sessions. I've got two weeks to combine an SQL program into a C program. the only problem is that I've never programmed in C and my SQLis laughable

Oh well.



Looking at it, I think I'd rather be doing history at this moment in time

I got my first two programming assignments this morning. Both of them are laughably easy. I reckon half an hour at most. Ten minutes, if I was allowed to write in C++, but no I have to use Java.



I'll have the donut with the highest percentage of chocolate by weight, please.

That'll be the chocolate supreme...

*hands one over*
I'm well jealous. You all get to do sensible languages, I get FORTRAN. joy. rapture...

Hi Jo. I'll have the usual please. BTW, I'm thinking of doing a module of FORTRAN programming - what are your thoughts about it?

Tell you what, I'll swap you my C programming assignment for your Java one. In fact, tell me what its about as I may have already done it already.

*hands over Justin's donut*

i don't like it, but thats because i learned pascal. Its good (apparently) for doing mathsy sciencey stuff, like complex calculations, but it looks like you can't program in a decent user interface if your life depends on it from first glances. Its a picky language, with some... counterintuitive ways of doing things, but its alright... unless your planning on a job in science though you'd do better going for Java or c++ i would have thought. Do you have salford plato on your network? I can give you a pointer to a web based course on FORTRAN 90, i'm using fortran 95 but it'll give you a feel for the language... the other thing is, have you programmed before? if you have you'll probably find it irritating, because chances are its not written with the same things in mind as other languages you may have learned.

Although saying that if you can put up with a few niggly differences, if you've programmed in one imperative language you've programmed in them all.

(note: this is the opinion of Croz's Imperative Languages tutor and not his own)

I've done a little programming - years ago I used to do a bit in BASIC (on BBC, Spectrum, etc...), and one of the modules I did last year was a short Java course. I think the Fortran course is on Fortran 90 - but I'd have to check. I haven't a clue if we've got salford plato on our network - I'd have to do a bit of research on that one.
I think the idea of the module is to program to solve equations and numerical problems, so it would have completely different aims to the Java course. Anyway, cheers for your advice. I'll probably go to the first few lectures, and see what happens.

The Java assignments are far too easy... we've only just started Introduction to Programming and I've been writing a GuideML editor in C++ so the "Hello World" standard in Java isn't that hard to reach...

Mmm, this donut is good!

And BTW, Pascal's a very cool language when it's used as the backend of Borland Delphi (admittedly it's not standard Pascal, but who cares when it's object-oriented?)

Time for a pre-lecture chocolate supreme.

*hands over donut*

the good thing about pascal is that you can program a user interface without killing yourself in the process. In Fortran? you might as well try to catch a bandersnatch.

Croz, I don't agree with your tutor. I've just found out how fortran does loops, and I am very disimpressed.

oh the joys of labs...