Well, at least nobody threw darts at it...

Poster was quite well received. Even got some questions about the content. The presentations themselves were also interesting. About the best one was from a guy who had actually bested Steve McConnell in an argument. I was a bit surprised to find that not everyone in the audience about a conference concerning teaching programming had read the seminal work "Code Complete". In my opinion this would be a bit like your driving instructor getting in the car and going "Really must read that Highway Code thing some time".

But at least the lecturers at Hull have read and applaud this great manuscript. (I was recently talking to a chap who runs a software development company. His first question to potential hires is "Have you read 'Code Complete'?". If the answer is no he finds a polite way to bring the interview to a close as soon as possible.) Actually I'm being very unfair here (but it is my blog). I taught programming for years before I happened accross a copy of this book in Borders one fine day. The good news is that everyone wrote the name down and seemed keen to take a look.

Of course if you have not read this book then you should find it, buy it, and then read it asap. And then have a policy of getting it down once every few weeks and re-reading one of the chapters.

Anyhoo, back to the plot and my little poster (which I have put here by the way). Everything went well and I got back into the hire car to drive home. Nice car the Mondeo. A little too easy to find reverse in my opinion (apologies to the scary way my reversing lights came on at that busy junction Mr. Bus Driver) but fun to drive - once you figure out that the thing on the steering wheel is not the on switch for the radio, but cruise control (that was kind of scary too). Things got even better when I found the switch to lower the seat to a "head not stuck in the roof" kind of position.

And then home. Still got a horrid cold though.

Comments

[A.Gurha]

Ahh.. again mention of Code Complete on your blog. I would agree on the point of your's as trying to become a sensible developer one should definately read "Code Complete". But personally i feel like that some of the later chapter's like Code tuning , strategies are quite a complex read and i atleast dont find them really understandable before one had really being involved in writing softwares for long.