>> ...but it was somewhat baffling to walk into a classroom
>> and discover that I know more about the subject than the lecturer does.

> Oh c'mon now!  Anyone who can think his way out of a wet paper bag has had this
> experience repeatedly. We're just socially trained not to say so.

What, that the person being paid to teach you something knows less about 
it than you already do?

Damn, if my driving instructor knew less about driving than me, I'd be 
pretty concerned!

>> ..."but comments are rather sparse". ...there's not a hell of a
>> lot to comment on.
>
> Been there squared. Sadly, MANY programming classes are taught by folks who
> can't follow more than a few lines of simple code without a continuous running
> series of comments telling them what they're reading.  Also, the catechism of

> who want to be able to hire low-wage nitwits to make any code change they might
> ever want.

In some sense, they're trying to teach you good programming technique 
and practises, and part of that is documenting what you're doing.

On the other hand, the Jackson's Structured Drawings, flow charts, 
extensive comments, etc. are all really, really overkill for any sort of 
programming project that you could realistically expect novice 
programmers to pull off in a month. The task has to be simple enough 
that it can be implemented in the time allotted; that kind of dooms it 
to be simple enough to not really need comments, elaborate design 
methodologies, nor any of the other lofty things they're trying to teach us.

So in a sense, they're trying to teach us to document our work, and I 
didn't. On the other hand, it didn't really *need* it.

A similar thing could be said of my programming assignment. In a sense, 
I did way, way more work than actually necessary, and made the program 
quite a bit more complicated than it could have been. On the other 
hand... GIVE ME A BREAK! Go learn how to write programs, and THEN you 
can lecture me about how I'm coding stuff wrong. :-P

>> And then there were the Quants lessons. ("Quantitative Methods") This,
>> as best as I can tell from my lecture notes, was simply an orgy of
>> mathematics. ...

> Well, we can never have too many of those, can we?

I never get this any more. :-(

>> You cannot
>> simply /tell/ me that (A + B)^2 = A^2 + 2AB + B^2. I have to know /why/
>> this is true. ...

> Bravo. I'm pretty sure that this attiude is a necessary condition for any
> meaningful application of the term "sentient".

Not one other person in the whole class cared in the slightest.

Then again, they all spent 25 minutes mindlessly computing like human 
calculators, so maybe "sentient" is stretching it. *I* learned 
something. :-P (Although not the thing on the syllabus...)

>> ...DKJ came over and informed me that I had just
>> invented differential calculus, and showed me the general formula for
>> the derivative of any polynomial.

> It's probably a very good thing that you delved into the foundations BEFORE
> being exposed to Leibniz notation, which (IMHO) strongly tends to obscure rather
> than illuminate underlying principles. (But, hey, /productivity/ is the ONLY
> truly important reason for mathematics, right?)

I borrowed my dad's calculus book. It explained it all from first 
principles, in really very clear language.

(I'd actually read the book once already, but utterly failed to 
comprehend what the hell it was talking about. I suppose having seen a 
practical application, it made more sense...)

>> I have nobody to impress anymore. :'{

> Why the ":'{" ?... Seriously.  Do you not grasp that THIS is truly ultimate
> victory?

How do you work that one out?

> I really do understand just how difficult it can be to break our addiction to
> praise, but unless we pull that particularly nasty little monkey off our backs
> and stomp on it, they'll always own us.

Nobody likes people who constantly seek attention. On the other hand, 
nobody wants to spend their entire life doing stuff and never getting 
any recognition at all...

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