From wrbooker at bellsouth.net Wed Aug 4 10:19:10 2004 From: wrbooker at bellsouth.net (Bill Booker ) Date: Wed Aug 4 10:19:22 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Pseudocode - Practices, standards, guidelines Message-ID: <20040804151915.MWTJ1788.imf22aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> Charlotte Perl Mongers, As I am just getting started in Perl, several sources have been referring to 'pseudocode' that aids in developing good code and documentation. The mention it but do not give any details or references. If you have knowledge of, or have resources to aid one to learn this technique properly rather than seat-of-the-pants, could you bring it and discuss it at the next meeting or forward it to me at wrbooker@bellsouth.net . Thank you Bill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/charlotte/attachments/20040804/8cea38c3/attachment.htm From william at knowmad.com Fri Aug 13 07:14:21 2004 From: william at knowmad.com (William McKee) Date: Fri Aug 13 07:14:29 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Pseudocode - Practices, standards, guidelines In-Reply-To: <20040804151915.MWTJ1788.imf22aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> References: <20040804151915.MWTJ1788.imf22aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> Message-ID: <20040813121421.GH852@knowmad.com> Hey Bill, Since the students must be slacking off between semesters ;-) or have replied to you directly, here's how I do it. When writing code that I've not written before, I use comments to layout the structure. It may look something like the following for converting the time to a 12 hr format: # get current time # get hour # if >= 12, set pm # if > 12, sub 12 # format time and return Then, I start putting in the code needed to make the comments "work". Recently, I've started using test-driven development whereby I write tests before writing code then write the code to pass the tests. We can take it up at the meeting next week. HTH, William -- Knowmad Services Inc. http://www.knowmad.com From william at knowmad.com Fri Aug 13 16:01:27 2004 From: william at knowmad.com (William McKee) Date: Fri Aug 13 16:01:32 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Pseudocode - Practices, standards, guidelines In-Reply-To: <20040813180306.DUEY1788.imf22aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> References: <20040813121421.GH852@knowmad.com> <20040813180306.DUEY1788.imf22aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> Message-ID: <20040813210127.GY852@knowmad.com> On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 02:05:00PM -0400, Bill Booker wrote: > William, > > Thank you for the reply and your tips. I would like to see your > process of writing the test questions to use as a guide for your > programming. > > I have e-mailed to a Chad at a university in Pennsylvania, who is > doing a thesis on "Eliciting Pseudocode in Novice Program Design by H. Chad > Lane ". He pointed me to two books on the subject, and another IT professor > in Denver. So I am searching these out also. > > From what I have been previously trained in and looking at all of > the university site hits, they require written pseudocode for all of their > assignments as a first step before moving forward to actual programming. > Yet, I can not find any guidelines that would direct a newcomer to success. Hi Bill, The tests I was referring to were not questions but actually tests for my code. In test-driven development, you code the tests then write the code to pass them. I'll be using an existing courseware for doing the training over the next several meetings. I remember my CS profs emphasizing writing the structure before writing the code (aka, top down development) but don't specifically remember them harping on pseudocode. I'll be interested to see what you've turned up. Someone suggested to me offlist that scripting languages are themselves pseudocode. I think this is a very keen insight (despite the fact that the original poster was promoting a specific language that begins with a P and sounds like a snake :). Gami et al, what's the current practice at UNCC? William PS - Let's try to keep our discussions on the list so that others can benefit. -- Knowmad Services Inc. http://www.knowmad.com From solinym at yahoo.com Fri Aug 13 22:21:07 2004 From: solinym at yahoo.com (Travis) Date: Fri Aug 13 22:21:10 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] OO style and pseudocode Message-ID: <20040814032107.44258.qmail@web61302.mail.yahoo.com> I've found that when using scripting languages, and particularly when using OO techniques, that there's no need for pseudocode. When it takes several lines to do one logical action, then pseudocode is appropriate. But in OO, if you can break down a step into several smaller steps, you usually encapsulate that by a method call. The end result of this is that each block operates at one level of abstraction, and so pseudocode and what you write should look similar. This is a good thing. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From william at knowmad.com Sat Aug 14 12:36:41 2004 From: william at knowmad.com (William McKee) Date: Sat Aug 14 12:36:46 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Fwd: Re: Auto-discard notification Message-ID: <20040814173641.GC852@knowmad.com> On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 06:00:56PM -0500, charlotte-bounces@mail.pm.org wrote: > umm, what was the original post ? could you forward that to the list, so > that i may answer this to the best of my knowledge, and within context. Here's the original post[1]. William [1] http://mail.pm.org/archives/charlotte/2004-August/000014.html -- Knowmad Services Inc. http://www.knowmad.com From wrbooker at bellsouth.net Sat Aug 14 14:34:55 2004 From: wrbooker at bellsouth.net (Bill Booker ) Date: Sat Aug 14 14:33:01 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] News on Perl 6 Message-ID: <20040814193259.PCTS1789.imf25aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> Charlotte - Perl Mongers >From O'Reilly's e-Newsletter at www.perl.com This Week on Perl 6, Week Ending 2004-07-18 The Piethon benchmark contest is beginning to loom, and the language list discusses how scalars should be interpolated and subscripted. http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/07/p6pdigest/20040718.html sub-by: Bill Booker -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/charlotte/attachments/20040814/f138a287/attachment.htm From william at knowmad.com Mon Aug 16 15:15:32 2004 From: william at knowmad.com (William McKee) Date: Mon Aug 16 17:08:08 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] News on Perl 6 In-Reply-To: <20040814193259.PCTS1789.imf25aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> References: <20040814193259.PCTS1789.imf25aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> Message-ID: <20040816201532.GN912@knowmad.com> On Sat, Aug 14, 2004 at 03:34:55PM -0400, Bill Booker wrote: > >From O'Reilly's e-Newsletter at www.perl.com > > This Week on Perl 6, Week Ending 2004-07-18 The Piethon benchmark > contest is beginning to loom, and the language list discusses how scalars > should be interpolated and subscripted. Unfortunately, Dan got pied[1][2]. At any rate, it appears to have resulted in some impressive improvements with Parrot[3]. William [1] http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/blog/archives/000370.html [2] http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oscon2004/friday/ [3] http://www.sidhe.org/~dan/blog/archives/000371.html -- Knowmad Services Inc. http://www.knowmad.com From william at knowmad.com Tue Aug 17 21:36:01 2004 From: william at knowmad.com (William McKee) Date: Tue Aug 17 21:36:07 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Meeting on Thursday Message-ID: <20040818023601.GF3075@knowmad.com> Hi folks, Sorry for the late meeting notice but it's been tough to track down a room with school opening this week. We will be meeting at the UNCC campus in room 111A of the Cone Building. A map will be mailed to the list later tonite or tomorrow. This month we'll be starting the first of the learning Perl sessions which will be held from 6:30 - 7:00pm. Laptops are not necessary. This week will be a quick intro to Perl with a look at creating a basic program. In the coming months we'll look at variables, operators, functions, conditional statements, subroutines, regular expressions and more. The general meeting this month will be a technical meeting looking at integrating Perl forms with the PayPal service. Hope to see you on Thursday, William -- Knowmad Services Inc. http://www.knowmad.com From william at knowmad.com Thu Aug 19 10:20:45 2004 From: william at knowmad.com (William McKee) Date: Thu Aug 19 10:20:52 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Meeting on Thursday In-Reply-To: References: <20040818023601.GF3075@knowmad.com> Message-ID: <20040819152045.GC3075@knowmad.com> > where is the map - I did not see it yet and want to come tonight Doh! Thanks for the reminder Doug. Here's a link to an interactive map[1] and a link to directions to getting to campus[2]. The Cone Center is right next to the Atkins library. We'll try put up some signs or inform the staff of the meeting. If you come in the main entrance, follow the road around to the visitor parking deck. Ask a student for directions to Cone. If any of the students can provide better instructions, speak up. See you tonite! William [1] http://www.admissions.uncc.edu/jump/CampusMap/UNCC.html [2] http://search.uncc.edu/maps/?p=directions -- Knowmad Services Inc. http://www.knowmad.com From gami at d10systems.com Thu Aug 19 06:34:57 2004 From: gami at d10systems.com (Dhruv Gami) Date: Thu Aug 19 10:35:55 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Meeting on Thursday In-Reply-To: <20040819152045.GC3075@knowmad.com> References: <20040818023601.GF3075@knowmad.com> <20040819152045.GC3075@knowmad.com> Message-ID: On Thu, 19 Aug 2004, William McKee wrote: > The Cone Center is right next to the Atkins library. We'll try put up > some signs or inform the staff of the meeting. If you come in the main > entrance, follow the road around to the visitor parking deck. Ask a > student for directions to Cone. If you park at the Visitor Deck, then Cone Centre is the building right next to it. Just before you drive into the Visitor Deck, you'll see a set of wide steps on your right. Hidden between the steps and the road to the deck, there's a door. Enter this door and turn right into the corridor. Room 111A is the second room to your left. If you enter Cone centre from any other place, simply ask for the Information Desk, and then take the stairs next to it down to level 1. The information Desk is on level 3. We'll put up signs near the Information Desk and the entry near the visitor deck to aid you find the room. regards, Gami -- Dhruv Gami http://d10systems.com/gami From william at knowmad.com Fri Aug 20 12:12:12 2004 From: william at knowmad.com (William McKee) Date: Fri Aug 20 12:12:16 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Links from meeting Message-ID: <20040820171212.GC1018@knowmad.com> Hi folks, It was good to see everyone at the meeting. Here are the links and examples for the training materials: Spork training materials - http://sourceforge.net/projects/spork/ Command-line examples: perldoc perldoc perldoc -f ('perldoc perlfunc' for all) perldoc -q perl -MCGI -e 'print $CGI::VERSION' perl -p -e '$_ = "$. - $_"' Articles: Great Hackers - http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html Dynamic Languages - http://www.activestate.com/Corporate/Publications/ActiveState_Dynamic_Languages.pdf Status of Perl6 - http://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2004/perl6_0804.html I'll get the website updated this afternoon with the materials from last night's presentation. William -- Knowmad Services Inc. http://www.knowmad.com From wrbooker at bellsouth.net Fri Aug 20 13:20:22 2004 From: wrbooker at bellsouth.net (Bill Booker ) Date: Fri Aug 20 13:20:40 2004 Subject: [Charlotte.PM] Ref Link to " new naming standard and data access protocol " Message-ID: <20040820182030.GZHL1792.imf18aec.mail.bellsouth.net@comptrnrbase> Charlotte Perl Mongers 1. Article I referred to last night about standardization on database information. Here is the article link. This is of special importance to those involved with Bioinformatics. URL: http://www.bio-itworld.com/archive/011204/lsid.html 2. Also, I found a parking invoice for $5.00 under my car's wiper. So, even if the gate is up they will charge. For us to meet on campus for non-UNCC members, can someone find a FREE parking location. For me the 90 minute round trip drive is enough expense. At NCSU, all campus parting is free after 5:00 pm, and one can park in Downtown Charlotte near the convention center for $5.00 for the whole day! 3. To help William and ourselves, I would like to suggest that a topics list be established to allow us to agree upon, and thus set content segments for future meetings that will be meaningful and would allow each member to share the owner ship in the quality, interest and value found in the Charlotte - Perl Mongers User's Group. This is a ball tossed up, who wants to hit it. Who agrees? Do we as a group agree? Do we want to do it? How to manage, run and get a schedule started? Sub-by: Bill Booker e-mail: wrbooker@bellsouth.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/charlotte/attachments/20040820/29d068dd/attachment.htm