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On 12/17/2010 5:14 AM, Parshwa Murdia wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:AANLkTi=y1TCHstKxHaXd90acW63E75596rqx8B_xMoR=@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 4:28 PM, Toxico
Nimbus <span dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:ToxN@free.fr">ToxN@free.fr</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt
0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);
padding-left: 1ex;">
- Don't use something you couldn't create yourself<br>
<font color="#888888">Toxico Nimbus<br>
</font></blockquote>
<div><br>
<br>
How you imagine could a beginner create something which he is
trying to learn? Could you do that by the time you started
learning? <br>
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<br>
</blockquote>
I suspect Toxico is speaking about a particular challenge that has
come up with educators teaching particularly OO languages as first
languages. Specifically, because of the strong encapsulation and
data hiding techniques present in these languages, a wide ecosystem
of reusable class libraries has surrounded them - to the point where
programming in these languages is often seen as an integration
effort - trying to integrate a series of class libraries. As a
result, a certain segment of the programming community has lost
understanding of huge swaths of the practice - particularly
foundational algorithms - such as searching and sorting algs -
because learning programmers just use rather than implement.<br>
<br>
When you are reusing code (like a sorting or search algorithm, or a
hash tree class in Java), think about whether you understand (at
least in basic terms) how that code is likely implemented. If you
were given the task of implementing a hash table (because
java.util.HashMap was unavailable to you), would you be able to?
Would you know where to start? Would you be able to describe the
performance characteristics of a search, insert or delete using this
structure? These are important questions that you should learn to
answer...<br>
<br>
PK<br>
<br>
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