What's google code jam?

I took a long break to focus on getting my CCNP, but I've decided not to pursue network engineering at the company I'm at

Did you finish? They are expiring most of the current CCNP 5.0 track I think in july.

Can I use Visual Basic. I was the Master of that in school, my lowest grade in that class was a 98 while 3/4 of the class were failing I did good in c++ also but I can't sit still long enough for programming.....

Yes. I actually need to study again starting about June/July if I want to renew my cert. It expires 02/2011. Haven't touched any of it in a while.

Can I use Visual Basic. I was the Master of that in school, my lowest grade in that class was a 98 while 3/4 of the class were failing I did good in c++ also but I can't sit still long enough for programming.....

At least you were the smartest kid in class with down's syndrome

They were Asian, don't let the eyes fool you....they kicked ass in Calculus not sure why they were having so much trouble with programming?

They wont expire your cert if you already earned it, BCMSN and BSCI are still good you just have to take the 3rd which is a troubleshooting test. ISCW and ONT wont help unless you get all four of the 5.0 track by July. I'm going to try and do BCMSN/BSCI and then take the troubleshooting, I have all the 5.0 texts! ugh

I took a C++ course in my first year of university. I came to the conclusion programmers either have some kind of lesion in their prefrontal cortex or have no soul, possibly both.

Will be running the problems in C# since that's the language I'll probably be working with in the future.

They were Asian, don't let the eyes fool you....they kicked ass in Calculus not sure why they were having so much trouble with programming?

programming and calculus are very, very different

It's all using formula's for problem solving....I guess you need more critical thinking with programming, but how hard is it to program a button to print Hello World on the screen?

A lot of programming doesn't require any calculations at all. Your Hello World program doesn't require any.

In 16 years of professional programming, most of the programming I have done doesn't require math more complex than the basics... addition, multiplication.

It's usually just designing user interfaces, pushing data around, validating user input, sending e-mails, basic number crunching... If the math required uses anything as complex as even square roots, there is usually someone on the business side making the requirement and they give you the exact formula they want you to use.

As a programmer, you rarely have to think about the math. The things I have to worry about are things like how to treat null values, what if a user enters text into a number field (or can you prevent this), what to do if data is out of range (I just had an integer field in a database and they wanted me to use it as a month... but there were a bunch of 13s in it. 13 is a valid month in accounting), error handling, etc...

That only helps my case, that if they could grasp the complexities of Calculus they should be able to handle the concept of If, else, then

Sounds like apples and oranges to me.

They are a different skill set.

I'm not sure programming can be taught to just anyone. There are abstract concepts especially when dealing with objects that can be explained and many can regurgitate the explanation but most don't really 'get it'... what it truly means.

Many people program for years writing crap without really understanding the overall picture of object oriented programming. To them, code is just a bunch of spaghetti-like if then statements which gets unmanageable in anything large.

I think programmers are kind of born programmers.

They are a different skill set.

I'm not sure programming can be taught to just anyone. There are abstract concepts especially when dealing with objects that can be explained and many can regurgitate the explanation but most don't really 'get it'... what it truly means.

Many people program for years writing crap without really understanding the overall picture of object oriented programming. To them, code is just a bunch of spaghetti-like if then statements which gets unmanageable in anything large.

I think programmers are kind of born programmers.

What's so hard to understand about OOP? To me, it's such a natural way of programming. I have much more difficulty trying to work in a functional language, but then again I never was good at Lisp/Scheme.

The hard part about programming is being able to design efficient algorithms. I'm no expert by any means, but being able to recognize the difference between a O(n log n) and O(n!) algorithms is a big deal. One will finish in your lifetime, one won't except in extremely small test cases.

Most people just don't get OOP. They try but their classes are still dependent on the inner workings of other classes.

Most real world business programming out there will never ask you to use O(n log n) or O(n!). Most stuff is just accounting, inventories, averages, etc... nothing that is complicated math wise. You do have to really understand the difference between

Database db = new Database();
db.Open();

for( int i = 1; i < 1000000; i++ )
{
db.Whatever(); // using database
}

and

for( int i = 1; i < 1000000; i++ )
{
Database db = new Database();
db.Open();

db.Whatever(); // using database
}

and

Database db = new Database();

db.Open();
db.CallStoredProcedureThatLoopsOneToOneMillion();

They all end up doing the exact same thing but there are very big performance differences