Newbie Coders Chat

You guys are doing Test-First Development? Man, that is an advanced practice and out of place for beginner programmers..

I would have to see all of your tests (all the code) to be able to judge it.

It's okay 57, i'm now scraping a 50% pass for this unit, and whilst i would have have liked for more, a pass, is a pass, is a pass, as they say!

Plus seeing as i have been programming for only two weeks or less, i am still a beginner, just with good internetting skills! And good friends to help me out.

I will let you know my grade for these programs when i get the feedback on mondey/tuesday.

Ok, but be aware that if you guys are doing Test-First development and none of your tests pass, that's the same as saying the program doesn't work.. and there is a high likelihood of 0 marks, if the professor is a Testing purist (which almost all of them are..).

57, it appears to all work automatically. And whilst i tried the program out a week ago, it was failing on all points, now while i try it out it scores 7 out of 13, so just under 50%. Which whilst not ideal, is still a pass (or just under). And seeing as my other program scores are currently about 50% which is in itself half of the overall grade, and my other none coding criateria (quizes etc) are about 80%, i should be able to scrape the 50% overall.

I may be new to coding, but i know my way around software games and degrees, having got one, so i think i should be alright. I will let you know as i said already.

Aww come on you got to aim high 100%. Prof will want to see your running the tests and them failing, then how you modified it to make it pass. Then for the bonus you 'refactor' the code to improve it then re-run the tests to see that your code still works.

Don't worry about the refactor bit but at least make all the tests pass!
Always aim as high as you can at uni that way if you dont achieve it your still at 80% :P

Aww come on you got to aim high 100%. Prof will want to see your running the tests and them failing, then how you modified it to make it pass. Then for the bonus you 'refactor' the code to improve it then re-run the tests to see that your code still works.

Don't worry about the refactor bit but at least make all the tests pass!
Always aim as high as you can at uni that way if you dont achieve it your still at 80% :P

What the heck? Why are you telling me these basics all over? I've done TDD for my entire educational career, it's nothing new to me. This is like someone telling me how to read.

Maybe you meant this answer to be for John.

What the heck? Why are you telling me these basics all over? I've done TDD for my entire educational career, it's nothing new to me. This is like someone telling me how to read.

Maybe you meant this answer to be for John.

To be honest with you i am getting tired and frustrated with this course. They claimed to be able for complete beginners to do it, but i have been struggling, and without google and social media, tsr, i wouldn't stand a chance at all. This isn't an undergraduate degree i am doing in computer science, but just an online certificate, and whilst i am finding it interesting, and learning some thing or two about the thing, i am still struggling. And i don't know if i have it in me to complete the four or five module series, seeing as there is also a psychology certificate program i want to get my teeth in to as well. Not to mention the voluntary work i am looking at starting in the near future.

I got 60% for my degree, which was a 2.1 pass (b grade), and i was very happy with this. I started this computer science course, mainly because my dad wanted me to, but now he won't even read over my code, so to be honest with you i am left asking, is it worth it. I have an interview on tuesday morning, and my wedding anniversary meal tomorrow, so it's not as if i don't have stuff to be doing?!?

If you already have a degree (in a popular field like Computer Science), then you have little to be worrying about.
If however, getting this computer programming certificate is life-changing and important, then go for it. The only thing you have to do is plan meticulously and follow your plan, don't deviate from it. Sit down, make a schedule and think about how you will spend your time between the things you have to do.

Work on the most important things in your life first. For example, for me, I dropped my social life so that I could get my Bachelors degree because it is critical for me to get a job out there, in this academically inflated world.
Take a look at what your highest priorities are and work on them.
From what I can see, your interview is the most important thing for now (unless I'm wrong).

Decide on your priorities and plan accordingly.

Data-driven apps use word manipulation a lot. For example, looking for all the words that have at least 5 letters in them, or between 1 and 3 letters. You could then build up a frequency table with accompanying graph, showing the distribution of most frequently typed words in the human language or in text messages.

In the real world youd likely use it for figuring out the number of items in an array.

For example if you fetched a list of customers from the web server. Those customers have likely been deserialised into an array on the javascript side.

You may then want to display each customers name but to do that you'd need to know how many customers are in the array. So for that we can use length property.

for(var i = 0; i<customers.length;i++)
//Add a <li> containing customer name


More examples from the real world:
Form field validation: user fills out form (e.g. to subscribe to a forum) and the nickname field has to have a character length between 3 and 50 characters. We don't want mysterious empty names!

I would assume it's just an example of how variables can be handled. Checking string length has various uses, too (I've had to use it several times in ProjectEuler), so it's not too far fetched, thus it makes sense that it would be used as an example. I would also say that JS is significantly harder than HTML/CSS, because it is an actual programming language as opposed to a markup language.

My first priority is to save my marriage, which is going through a rough patch at the moment. After that starting some form of voluntary job, and then things like my future education, such as possibly doing another conversion psychology masters degree. I'm in a mess atm to be honest with you, because my wife is making my life hell, and all of her family and friends, and most of my family, are on her side. My life sucks atm!