NYCPHP Meetup

[Bruce Martin]

On Apr 23, 2008, at 1:42 PM, Urb LeJeune wrote:
>
>> 1. What's required to become certified (obvious);
>
>        To you is obvious, to me not so obvious :-) I know I sound  
> like a broken record but to me
> programming is not about syntax it's about logic and problem solving.

I would agree. I have seen a few people whom became certified in  
various languages, but could not follow the simple logic of a program.  
When it came time to debug the code they where completely lost. If the  
function of sub routien did not produce the expected outcome, they had  
no idea how to find the root of the problem.
I am self taught in all but PERL, which was my first encounter with  
regular expressions. Had it not been for the regular expressions I  
would have learned that on my own as well. I have found that one thing  
in all programming languages is true and that is the logic, which  
makes it easy, IMHO, to learn multiple languages. The syntax is simply  
the structure or language, if you will, of the logic.

>        Many years ago Edsger Dijkstr, one of the giants of computer  
> science, wrote an article
> suggesting that a first course in computer programming be taught  
> without using a computer.
> At the time I thought he was nuts, but after teaching introductory  
> programming for many years
> I agree with the concept. Especially in the beginning, syntax get is  
> the way of solving problems.
> Any non-trivial problem will have multiple solutions. How does one  
> determine if their approach
> is the "best" solution to the problem and not simple a solution that  
> works. In my experience
> elegant (read simple) solutions do not happen while you sit at a  
> keyboard but rather sitting in
> a quite place with a pad and pencil.

How true.

>        If you've never read "Programming Pearls" by Jon Bentley,  
> beg, borrow, or steal a copy
> and read it. It will change the way you look at programming.

I will have to add this to my collection.

Thanks,
Bruce Martin
The Martin Solution
bruce at martinsolution.com
http://www.martinsolution.com
http://externals.martinsolution.com



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