For extra credit Professor Johnson pointed the class to a website called StackOverflow. The StackOverflow website appears to be gathering place for programmers of all types: OOP, scripting, database, etc. The purpose of StackOverflow seems to be a help desk of sorts where coding questions get asked and answered.
As someone who is striving to someday be a professional programmer StackOverflow seems a little intimidating. There are coders asking questions for which I have no answer because I lack the background and expertise. However, I was able to come up with a question that has been bugging me since ICS 211. Basically, I wanted to know how to improve my design skill i.e., I am tired of programming from the hip, how can I be a better programmer? Within hours of posting the question I received eight answers from people who I assume are professional programmers. The replies were pretty much in the same vein think before coding, understand the specifications, experience helps, etc. Not that I think the answers were lame and did not get anything out of the post. The responses were similar but each reply shared a pearl of wisdom which I hope to apply in the near future.
After searching for question which I thought I could suitably answer. I found myself thinking should I reply to the question? Because from what I gathered all of the answers were from industry folk who have done some serious coding. My biggest project to date was a pseudo database from ICS 311. So I felt like a little kid amongst the grown ups. But I figure what is the harm in throwing in my answer? Hopefully, I will not get flamed for such a pitiful response.
By the way my question on design improvement received five votes which promoted me to scholar, whatever that means.
