Brushing up on C (Part 1)

A while ago I read an article on how a certain professor believes teaching Java as a first programming language is 'damaging' to CS students.

Well, I totally agree.

But I also don't think learning Pascal (as in my university..) is the best solution ever. The students get used to code their projects in a language totally obsolete (ok, there's delphi.. :P), and are supposed to "learn how to program in any language". It's true that with a language like Pascal you are able to focus mainly on the algorithm itself. However, the freedom you have in C to do nasty things (pointer arithmetic, anyone?) is definitely not present in Pascal. Though I was a "good" Pascal programmer (haha what a joke...), I remember I had big problems with C. And after spending several years mostly coding in Java, I still do.

So I decided to "brush up" on my C skills. I will start by posting one of the most useful pieces of code ever, which can be easily adapted to any programming language (talk about language independence huh, Dr. Edmond Schonberg?)

And here you go: a simple way to check command line arguments, in C.

(Ha, I bet you were expecting some awesome data structure or a really cool algorithm! Well, I doubt you can find a solution like the one above that doesn't involve a bunch of stupid "else if" statements :D)

On the ultimate personality test

Et voilà!

Taken from Coster's blog :)

On more creative spam

A new one today:

Dear Joana M. Fonseca,

We would like to inform you about the "Project on an Integral and Integrative Perspective on Engineering and Meta-Engineering" which will mainly contain several publications, empirical research, and conferences organization. We appreciate if you can share your opinion with us with regards to this issue. You can do so by filling the inquiry form at:
http://www.iiis.org/inquiry/b.asp?t=u02&e=MYEMAIL@NOSPAM.UNI.BR
It will require no more than one minute of your valuable time.

We would also like to inform you that, in the context of this project, we have already decided to 1) publish a book with the tentative title of "Reflections on Engineering and Meta-Engineering for the XXI Century", and 2) organize The First International Multi-Conference on Engineering and Technological Innovation (IMETI 2008; http://www.infocybereng.org/imeti2008). Consequently, any information regarding your potential participation in any of these two activities will be highly appreciated.

The rational supporting and motivating this project can be found in the article "The Essence of Engineering and Meta-Engineering: A Work in Progress" available at http://www.iiis.org/Nagib-Callaos/Engineering-and-Meta-Engineering

Best regards,

Prof. Nagib C.Callaos
IMETI 2008 General Chair
www.sciiis.org/Nagib-Callaos

I kept receiving congratulations for having a paper accepted in a GESTS conference, but this is the first time I get emails from the famous Nagib Callaos! :D

On nice and useful diagrams

As an occasional UML user, I find it sometimes troublesome to express more general software architecture concepts using only class, activity or even deployment diagrams. When the target audience does not have much IT knowledge, it may be difficult to present ideas by using diagrams intended for representing "executable" code. On the other hand, a set of boxes with no direct semantics associated to it might require a lot of effort (or presentation skills) to make it understandable.

I recently came across an interesting solution for this kind of problem, the Fundamental Modeling Concepts (or just FMC). From the website:

"It (FMC) enables people to communicate the concepts and structures of complex informational systems in an efficient way among the different types of stakeholders. A universal notation originating from existing standards, easy to learn and to apply, is defined to visualize the structures and to communicate in a coherent way. In contrast to most of the visualization and modeling standards of today it focuses on human comprehension of complex systems on all levels of abstraction by clearly separating conceptual structures from implementation structures."

Besides, you can make some really nice and understandable diagrams like this one. It definitely seems worth giving a quick look :D