University of Canterbury

Learning & Teaching Code Style & Appreciation

Yesterday in an informal COSC208 (C and C++ programming) lecture at the University of Canterbury, discussion broke out on how to teach and learn coding Style. Here are my 2 cents;

I believe it's not possible to effectively teach & learn Style with single-developer programs that have a clearly limited life span -- such as all code written for COSC208 and most undergraduate university papers. Once the paper has finished and the grade has been determined, who is going to maintain the student's code? Who is going to read your code? No one. So why would the author/programmer/student bother to make it easy to read or maintain, or care for Style? They would not -- except if the prof mandates it. But as pointed out yesterday, that is very resource-consuming and fails to teach an appreciation for Style.

Microsoft trying to be cool -- using (exploiting?) students as a marketing device

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mar 17, 2008 9:49 AM
Subject: Microsoft Student Partners 2008
To: all@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz

Hey everyone,

My name is Janina Voigt and I am one of the three Microsoft Student
Partners for 2008. The other Student Partners are Yugan Yugaraja and
Mayur Sampat.
Our role is to bridge the gap between students and academics at
Canterbury, and Microsoft.

We will be carrying out presentations and/or workshops throughout the
year on a variety of topics such as .NET Framework, C#, Popfly,

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