Computer Association of SIUE - Forums

Hmm, I read the results a little differently than you.

Having been on the forums since the beginning, I would actually consider the decline happening in 2007, when we switched to the SMF forums.  The SMF forums just aren't as good as Xoops was.  I thought we already had a lot of work put in on Xoops and should have either gotten our forums updated to the latest version or should have just forked it, but that isn't important anymore.  I also consider the peak to be an anomaly; if you look on either side of the peak, you'll see that the post rate was fairly steady.

I think the second major decline occurred right around moving the forums out of focus.  There actually was never any reason you couldn't use the SMF forums for announcements; we used forums like that all the time in the past.  It was just as effective at doing announcements as your current front-facing page probably is.  The only real negative about it that I can see next to the current page is that maintaining an easy-to-see history of announcements wasn't as great (but could have been made better if we did it).

Lastly, it's possible Facebook and Twitter have gotten in the way.  That's a conclusion that isn't really supported in your graphs, however, but I can see it as a possible reason.  Although, I don't consider it a bad idea to experiment and open a CAOS page on Facebook, but I don't think the Facebook group pages are really as good at having separate topics of discussion like a forum is.  It seems more like a stream of comments, unless I've missed something, but it's worth trying.  I actually thought about considering mentioning diaspora to Brent a couple months ago when he talked about updating the forums, but that code base is too incomplete (and has a stupid name, to boot).

P.S. Complaining is not in itself juvenile.  It's one way change is effected (i.e. complaining to members of Congress for reform, complaining to your faculty members for course reform, complaining to the current CAOS officers for forum reform).

Quote from: William Grim on 2010-11-16T15:31:38-06:00 (Tuesday)
Sounds good.  I took the Linux Kernel Programming course at SIUE.  While I don't use that knowledge directly everyday, it comes in really handy a lot more than you'd think, especially when you're trying to figure out why an app crashed while using some of the core syscalls.

wow wish the current "unix/linux for kernel development" could make me say the same thing. as far as people in there who've never done any *nix things, they probably hate *nix and think everything is revolving around solaris (i kid you not the guy is teaching us about solaris specific things)

Let me start by saying that I'm thankful that several of us have voiced our opinions about the forums "dying" since they've been moved off of the landing page. [sarcasm] Surprisingly, [/sarcasm] I got the point the very first time someone mentioned it. But it is something worth noting. Apart from what anyone else thinks, I still believe the landing page is better suited as it is a center for main events.

At any rate, I got frustrated the other night after reading posts along the lines of "[the boards have] dried up a lot since being taken off the CAOS main page." or "The board is active, but not as much since it was moved off the main page."

We get it.

In order to set the order straight, I did a little research. Last night I pulled a current dump of the database and graphed the number of posts over time. There are two graphs: one that shows posts by month from September of 2002 through now, and one that shows yearly posts since 2002.

see the month by month graph here: http://marksands.github.com/caos/month.html

see the yearly graph here: http://marksands.github.com/caos/year.html

The yearly graph shows a dying trend in forum posts ever since it peaked at 2005. The monthly graph also supports the hypothesis that moving the forums is  also related to even more of a decrease in forum posts.

Before I continue, note that a dying trend in forum posts doesn't mean less interested computer science undergrads or less active caos members.

That said, it still is a little upsetting that the forums are showing decreasing activity. However, think about what's happened with technology since 2005. Back then there weren't really any popular social networks, and Facebook had literally just launched. Whereas now, I see a lot of active caos members dodging the forums to post questions/thoughts/other ideas related to CS directly on Facebook wherein other caos members engage in discussion.

I don't see the point in trying to revive the forums if people are going elsewhere. Instead, we should just move caos where the activity is currently at. If we need to make a Facebook page, a twitter page, a whatever-the-heck page, then we should. I don't see the point in fighting it, and I really don't see the point in being juvenile on the forums as an act to point this out.

I like the forums, but I don't think it is, or necessarily should be, the target for the CAOS audience. 2011 is just around the corner, so let's get with it, accept change, and move on. No one's going to be deleting the forums, especially because of little activity, but can we please just stop the complaining?

Thanks

Just being familiar with Unix is a good thing imo.

I have talked to people from other colleges and it seems that most colleges always pick some language and/or OS and stick with it through the whole degree.  However, that isn't how real life is, so why teach students that way?

Here is how I see it, in case anyone cares lol.  I think C++, on a windows box, using Visual Studio is a great way to start.  It cuts out all the overhead and lets students focus on learning syntax and the finer points of programming.  So, maybe use that in 140 and 150.  Then in 240 I say you switch to a Linux box.  In 240 you start getting into data structures and some algorithms.  No need for visual studio anymore and it would be a great time to teach students how to make Makefiles and make them stop counting on intelliSense.

I can't remember what all the prerequisites are, but around this time students start getting into CS245.  When I took that class it was all VB, which is fine, but we could do much more.  Most of my VB projects just grew in complexity, I am not sure I learned a ton more, with the exception of the one we did that connected to a database.  So, you could do a semi simple VB program that will teach them how to build GUIs with VB.  Then do a more complicated one that connects to a database.  After this there is no reason they shouldn't be able to switch to something like QT Designer, Java Swing (Netbeans makes this pretty easy) or even make GUIs using the .NET framework using Visual Studio.  Just so they experience GUI development with different languages and environments.  IDK, maybe that is too much to ask of a 245 student, but they would learn a lot.

Finally, I think by 340 they should be writing everything in Unix.  This is all algorithms and data structures, you don't need VS for any of this.

So, by the time they get to classes like Programming Languages they should be able to start digging into the finer points of some popular languages.  You could make the first assignment a HTML webpage.  Web design is still big.  Make this a simple 1 week project that will be used later in the course.  The next project can be JavaScript.  Have them manipulate the HTML page and do some fun stuff there.  Maybe even show them JavaScript libraries like jQuery or Dojo.  The next project could then be a Java Servlet.  The professor could have a small mySQL database created and have the students write a servlet they can call from JavaScript that will pull data from the Database, build a JSON out of it and return it to their webpage to be displayed etc.  Finally, they could program a Java WebService that can be called from the servlet that hits the database instead.  Of course the professor would have to have a completed webpage for anyone that couldn't do the HTML assignment (hope that isn't the case).  After all this they could write some C# stuff.  Maybe explore abstract classes and interfaces.  Maybe even do some Perl or Python scripting.

All the 400 lvl courses I think should just be up to the teacher.  Teach students that things won't always be the same from job to job or even program to program.  Anyways, that is my 2 cents.  Sorry it is so long.

Quote from: Gary Mayer on 2010-11-16T12:23:08-06:00 (Tuesday)
I'll mention *nix usage in the next Undergraduate Curriculum Committee meeting. The committee is striving to make some needed changes to the curriculum and making progress. Some of those changes lend themselves to multiple OS platforms.

Sounds good.  I took the Linux Kernel Programming course at SIUE.  While I don't use that knowledge directly everyday, it comes in really handy a lot more than you'd think, especially when you're trying to figure out why an app crashed while using some of the core syscalls.

I'll mention *nix usage in the next Undergraduate Curriculum Committee meeting. The committee is striving to make some needed changes to the curriculum and making progress. Some of those changes lend themselves to multiple OS platforms.

Oh, I meant to say that I am currently getting involved with QT Designer.  I want to make a tool to handle squid+ettercap on an N900 to support the packages I've already submitted to Maemo's extras-devel repo.

I'd say I get a pretty even flow between C++ and Java positions being offered to me, with some occasional C# thrown in.  Almost all of them are primarily Linux-based except for the C# positions.

I think Linux is a good thing to teach students, because it's out there today.  It may not be on the desktop yet, but it's all over in the embedded space, server racks, and computing farms, and it's only getting bigger.

I also think it's just as important to learn C++.  Due to political reasons surrounding Java, I'm not as sure about learning that one in an academic environment anymore, especially when combined with the fact that I think C++ gives you a broader depth of knowledge, because C++ can just do more in the language.

Also, yes, the boards are active, but like thatguy said, they've dried up a lot since being taken off the CAOS main page.

The board is active, but not as much since it was moved off the main page. 

I've never used any C++ outside of school and I spend 75% of my time working in a *nix environment.  I don't even code when I'm in Windows, it's all report writing and other bureaucratic stuff.

I'll have to agree with you that linux being taught is important, in fact it was part of a large discussion on these boards a few weeks back about possibly having that be something required here (i think?)