On Apr 15, 2009, at 2:24 PM, Herbert Graf wrote:

> Similar situation, 4th year, one of the final EE labs (I think it  
> was an analog electronics course), a few people came to me, VERY  
> smart people, asking which side of a diode was the cathode...

I dunno.  I've heard that it's very rare to have a SW engineering  
applicant be able to write out an error-free example of some common  
algorithm (say, a binary search.)  In some ways, that's a bit sad.  On  
the other hand, I personally hardly ever even TRY to get perfect code  
the first time; the compiler will find my missing semicolons or  
misspelled keywords in a lot less time than it would have taken me to  
be anal about them in the first place.  The idea that code has to be  
completely correct before you try it out dates back to the days when  
it was going to take hours and cost "real money" to have your card  
deck scheduled through the chain of steps it took to actually run it...

BillW

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