• AHGrayLensman (unregistered)

    I think Gabrielle taught the MIPS assembler class I took as an undergrad too...

    I think the best thing a student in that web dev class could do would be to run one of her HTML files through http://validator.w3.org/ and show her the resulting smorgasboard of errors and warnings.  Not that it would do any good, but it would be tremendously gratifying.

     

  • I love it (unregistered) in reply to cratermoon
    Satanicpuppy:

    Seriously. In my world, HTML is something that graphic designers do, and when they get done with it, I attack their prettiness with my Geek fu and make it walk, talk, and infect your computer with awesomeness.

     

    "Geek fu"? I love it!

  • Jer (unregistered)

    It didn't occur to me this may not be about a teacher... which should tell you something about some profs at my uni.

  • (cs) in reply to Shadowman
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Am I the only person who thinks that HTML can be a program, and while on the surface non-sensical, it could be insightful?  And that therefore, while funny WRT common sense, it actually isn't a WTF?

    HTML programs are written in a format humans can understand.

    HTML programs uses various syntax elements (the programming language) to create a desired output.

    The HTML programs are interpreted by applications called browsers.

    Sure, there's no flow control but that doesn't make something not a programming language.  While the majority is just used for outputting documents, PostScript is a programming language as well, and you can call your .ps files PostScript programs and nobody should argue.  I don't see the difference in calling an HTML file a program and calling a perl "file" that outputs text a program.

    Yeah...I'm not buying it either.  HTML is a markup language. It's more like a datafile supplied to a program -- the browser in this case -- much the same way you would use a flat textfile of numbers in a statistics program.

    It certainly isn't Turing-complete, doesn't have any means for implementing algorithms. 

    Agreed!

  • NZ'er (unregistered) in reply to Steamer2k

    One of the tutors in a course I took while at university, was under pressure because over 60% of his class had failed the course for the last three years he had taught it (exams marked by another tutor to ensure no bias).

    If this happend again with our class he would be fired.  During the exam he got up, announced he was going to go and get a coffee and would not be back for exactly 25 mins.  Since his teaching was crap and most of us were going to fail as soon as he was out of the room the brain boxes started answering the questions as for everyone else to reword. 25 mins later most people had finished the exam and when the tutor arrived back right on time handed in their papers and walked out.  No one wanted to report it because it was a required course and it would have ment re-sitting and probably failing the exam.  Now days I look back and wish I or somone else had reported it, so the next years class didn't have to suffer his incompetence.

  • craptastic (unregistered) in reply to CodeRage
    CodeRage:

    Those MIT freaks must be so out of touch. 

    Have you ever seen "those MIT freaks"?  They are most definitely out of touch in almost a blue powder leisure suit with cowboy boots sort of way. 

  • (cs) in reply to craptastic
    Anonymous:
    CodeRage:

    Those MIT freaks must be so out of touch. 

    Have you ever seen "those MIT freaks"?  They are most definitely out of touch in almost a blue powder leisure suit with cowboy boots sort of way. 

    Thread winner.

    Unlike the rest of the nerd herd that like to whip out the "turing-complete" catch phrase as often as possible, and argue about whether or not HTML is a programming language (which it's not).

  • BG (unregistered) in reply to Web Developer

    > While that claim is convenient its not really correct, for instance ANSI/SQL is not turing complete, and its still considered a programming langage. There's also Charity :)

    Some of my friends are considered smart. All depends on the fact, who considers.

    SQL is not a programming language. PL/SQL is.

  • (cs) in reply to Sean
    Anonymous:

    The really sad part is people actually, honestly, complain if we go "get vim, run vimtutor, use vim" in cs201 anymore.  Apparently hand holding is required.
     

    You guys got that much instruction?  We didn't even have "vim", much less a "vimtutor".  We had a one page cheat sheet of commands handed out, end of story.  Students who couldn't learn tools on their own were in trouble (which is good, since they couldn't survive in the real world).  Programming languages were also not taught extensively during lectures, but were mostly covered in sections or office hours (for those unfamiliar, sections are smaller discussion groups run by graduate students). 

    The WTF here for me is that not only are there such things as "Web Development" classes, but that these are upper division courses and that someone used the words "graduate level" in the same sentence.  Sheesh.  Please tell me this was ITT Tech or DeVry and not a university.

  • Christopher Clark (unregistered) in reply to Chris
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    This is NOT a WTF. The <html> element is implied in a html document. IE is correct in rendering pages with no html element as if they had one, Firefox does the same. It may not be the best form, but its 100% valid.

    The same is true of the <head> element, the <body> element is even implied in certain situations.

    Valid HTML Document: 

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
    <title>foo</title>
    <p>foo</p>

    Seems the professor isn't the only one who doesn't understand HTML... 

    Captcha: error

     Yep, you don't either.  IE and Firefox will render it because they have a duty to at least attempt rendering whatever godawful crap gets thrown at them.  This doesn't mean you don't write proper HTML.  An HTML document must start with the <html> tag and end with the </html> tag.  That is part of the standard.  If you don't do that, you are not compliant with the HTML standard.  Period.

     

    Chris Mattern
     

    Okay, once more with feeeeeeeeeeeling...

    This is not a rendering issue. A rendering issue this is not. Rendering issue? Not this!

    Have we chapter-and-versed this enough, yet?

    --
    Christopher Clark

  • (cs) in reply to Manni
    Manni:

    I've come to learn how these articles work themselves out.[snip].... waaaaaait for it....

    "Gabrielle was not a student in the Web Development course. She taught it." And there it is, the moneyshot. Well done sir, well done.

    And the punchline wasn't even given away in the title!  wtf?!
  • (cs) in reply to Web Developer
    Anonymous:

    This is NOT a WTF. The <html> element is implied in a html document. IE is correct in rendering pages with no html element as if they had one, Firefox does the same. It may not be the best form, but its 100% valid.

    The same is true of the <head> element, the <body> element is even implied in certain situations.

    True, but you still can't start with <body> because you need the <title> tag.
    Anonymous:

    While that claim is convenient its not really correct, for instance ANSI/SQL is not turing complete, and its still considered a programming langage.

    IIRC recent versions of ISO SQL are Turing complete, but I don't think many if any DBMSes actually implement all the necessary features.
  • yet another Alex (unregistered) in reply to Dazed
    Anonymous:

    I wouldn't necessarily be too hard on someone who has trouble switching a computer on, either. Several designers of computer cabinets seem to have studied at WTFU. I remember one with a large round silver switch that wouldn't do anything. After getting down on my knees I found that the "silver switch" was a decorative logo (which was a bit loose and did actually move when I pressed it) while the power switch was much smaller, the same dark colour as the cabinet, and near enough invisible. Idiotic design.

    I assume you are referring to Dell Precision. You will realise that this is not an idiotic design once you envision yourself accidentally bumping your knee into that large silver "switch" thingie. If it were indeed a power switch, you'll be sorry

  • (cs) in reply to Oaks

    Oaks:

    I know it's not as bad, but I had a Novell teacher in HS that didn't quite know what he was talking about unless it came directly from the book. He tried not to let on that he didn't know anything. If you asked him how something worked, his response would be "why don't you go try it out and tell me what happens?" 

    That doesn't sound bad to me at all.  He encouraged you to be curious and to learn on your own, and he didn't fill you full of BS.  I'm much more put off by people who will lie or let you believe anything as long as you think they know everything.

  • (cs) in reply to Christopher Clark
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    This is NOT a WTF. The <html> element is implied in a html document. IE is correct in rendering pages with no html element as if they had one, Firefox does the same. It may not be the best form, but its 100% valid.

    The same is true of the <head> element, the <body> element is even implied in certain situations.

    Valid HTML Document: 

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
    <title>foo</title>
    <p>foo</p>

    Seems the professor isn't the only one who doesn't understand HTML... 

    Captcha: error

     Yep, you don't either.  IE and Firefox will render it because they have a duty to at least attempt rendering whatever godawful crap gets thrown at them.  This doesn't mean you don't write proper HTML.  An HTML document must start with the <html> tag and end with the </html> tag.  That is part of the standard.  If you don't do that, you are not compliant with the HTML standard.  Period.

     

    Chris Mattern
     

    Okay, once more with feeeeeeeeeeeling...

    This is not a rendering issue. A rendering issue this is not. Rendering issue? Not this!

    Have we chapter-and-versed this enough, yet?

    --
    Christopher Clark

    I'm going to give everyone an out here. It's obviously valid HTML. It's most definately not valid XHTML.

    This will never hope to validate:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <title>foo</title>
    <p>foo</p>

    Yes, I know that wasn't your point, but it'd be nice to think that enough people are using XHTML these days that they've just mentally swapped the two terms HTML and XHTML. 

  • doc0tis (unregistered)

    Alex Papadimoulis:

    Gabrielle was not a student in the Web Development course. She taught it.

     
    Oh God... I had classmates like this, but... oh god...

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to doc0tis

    I just wrote a TXT program and ran it in notepad.  Amazingly, it also ran in Firefox... there must be a TXT emulator in there.

  • (cs) in reply to cratermoon
    Anonymous:


    My hypothesis is that someone lacking a clue decided that a COMPUTER science curriculum MUST cover web development, and the CS profs (and anyone else with programming experience) were so disgusted with the idea that they refused to teach it, so they had to drag in someone 'leet from outside. 

    This may have come from pressure from industry.  Ie, big Fortune 500 company complains that all their entry level web developers from WTFU are hopeless with HTML, and they only know useless skills like queueing theory, LALR parsing, and computational complexity.  Now you can't even begin to create a great web infrastructure without having people who know something about those skills, but industry doesn't see it that way.  They've already got the senior engineers who can do that hard stuff.  They want universities to churn out entry level employees who work cheap and who don't have to be trained.  Universities on the other hand, prefer to educate.  Industry wants short-term gains; universities prepare for long term results.

    So many universities go half way; they add these silly courses (often utilized by the continuing education schools and non-majors) which don't get in the way of their main mission.  There's an added advantage that visiting professors can teach them with minimal preparation. 

  • enterprisey (unregistered) in reply to webzter
    webzter:

    but it'd be nice to think that enough people are using XHTML these days

    Good heavens why?!?!?

    XHTML is another name for the devil! 

  • catfood (unregistered) in reply to Jon

    Anonymous:
    My high school statistics teacher (more like a facilitator) was also a hs football coach at a different school. He'd scribble something on the board and turn around "Does that look right, Jon?". And to think that half the class dropped out because they found it too hard.

    I teach IT classes part-time at the local community college. Once in a while they give me something a little out of my field--such as this past spring when nobody else was willing to do the Saturday morning class on help desk administration. One of my students was himself an experienced help desk admin, who knew more than I did about the topic and just needed the credit to complete his IT degree.

    So it was probably at least once per class period, I'd catch something that didn't make sense in the textbook, or I'd find a gap in my own knowledge. I didn't feel bad about interrupting myself to ask Gary to fill the class in on that point.

    Community college can be like that because so many of the students are older, more experienced in a very specific area, and no longer used to being lectured to anyway. I've often had students with advanced degrees in related (or unrelated) areas, taking my classes to fill in gaps. For example, in my VB.NET class one semester there was this brilliant guy from Nigeria, probably over 50 years old, who already had a PhD in biology but wanted to learn programming. Working with him was very different from working with my post-high-school students.

    There was also a local fellow who already had a four-year degree in CS and about fifteen years' experience but had been out of work for two years after the dot-com bust; he wanted a refresh/update of his VB6 knowledge. I leaned on that guy a lot too, because he was smart, eager to share what he knew, and experienced in slightly different application areas from what I was used to.

    So... yeah. It's important for instructors at all levels to know what they are talking about, but I honestly don't think it's a bad thing when students help a little. In community colleges it happens all the time because of the very diverse student body and the varying backgrounds of instructors.

     

  • tps (unregistered) in reply to darin
    darin:

    Universities on the other hand, prefer to educate.  Industry wants short-term gains; universities prepare for long term results.

    You must be a time traveller from the early 16th century or something.  Universities in the late 20th century and early 21st century simply prefer to bjork money from gullible "students".  Education is a known side effect.

    Universities no longer prepare for long term results.  They simply hope the short term results will last a long time. 

  • tps (unregistered) in reply to tps
    Anonymous:
    darin:

    Universities on the other hand, prefer to educate.  Industry wants short-term gains; universities prepare for long term results.

    You must be a time traveller from the early 16th century or something.  Universities in the late 20th century and early 21st century simply prefer to bjork money from gullible "students".  Education is a known side effect.

    Universities no longer prepare for long term results.  They simply hope the short term results will last a long time. 

    I forgot to point out that while education is a known side effect, it isn't necessarily a common side effect. Please consult with your physician to determine if university is right for you.  If you have a family history of mild or severe idiotic tendencies, university may not be right for you.

  • anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to Ornedan
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Am I the only person who thinks that HTML can be a program, and while on the surface non-sensical, it could be insightful?  And that therefore, while funny WRT common sense, it actually isn't a WTF?

    HTML programs are written in a format humans can understand.

    HTML programs uses various syntax elements (the programming language) to create a desired output.

    The HTML programs are interpreted by applications called browsers.

    Sure, there's no flow control but that doesn't make something not a programming language.  While the majority is just used for outputting documents, PostScript is a programming language as well, and you can call your .ps files PostScript programs and nobody should argue.  I don't see the difference in calling an HTML file a program and calling a perl "file" that outputs text a program.
     

    I'd say a fair criterion that a language needs to fill before it can be called a programming language would be being Turing-complete. HTML isn't.

    Whether it's a useful language or not, I don't think that necessarily invalidates my original argument.

  • chocobot (unregistered) in reply to anonymouse
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    Am I the only person who thinks that HTML can be a program, and while on the surface non-sensical, it could be insightful?  And that therefore, while funny WRT common sense, it actually isn't a WTF?

    HTML programs are written in a format humans can understand.

    HTML programs uses various syntax elements (the programming language) to create a desired output.

    The HTML programs are interpreted by applications called browsers.

    Sure, there's no flow control but that doesn't make something not a programming language.  While the majority is just used for outputting documents, PostScript is a programming language as well, and you can call your .ps files PostScript programs and nobody should argue.  I don't see the difference in calling an HTML file a program and calling a perl "file" that outputs text a program.
     

    I'd say a fair criterion that a language needs to fill before it can be called a programming language would be being Turing-complete. HTML isn't.

    Whether it's a useful language or not, I don't think that necessarily invalidates my original argument.

    Your original statement invalidates your argument.  HTML is a markup language.  As somebody else pointed out, it is no different than using MS Word or WordPerfect and changing the font type or making some text bold or underlined. 

  • Craig B (unregistered) in reply to SeeJay
    Anonymous:

    My favourite was the network prof who gave us an example with the IP address 333.333.333.333. 

    Your prof might have been smarter than you think. I've worked on a couple of very old operating systems where that *is* a valid IP address. What the comptuer would do is keep subtracting 256 from each quad until it got a result in [0,255]. I believe this used to be used in obfuscating links in web pages.

     

    B 

  • (cs) in reply to Christopher Clark
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    This is NOT a WTF. The <html> element is implied in a html document. IE is correct in rendering pages with no html element as if they had one, Firefox does the same. It may not be the best form, but its 100% valid.

    The same is true of the <head> element, the <body> element is even implied in certain situations.

    Valid HTML Document: 

    <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
    <title>foo</title>
    <p>foo</p>

    Seems the professor isn't the only one who doesn't understand HTML... 

    Captcha: error

     Yep, you don't either.  IE and Firefox will render it because they have a duty to at least attempt rendering whatever godawful crap gets thrown at them.  This doesn't mean you don't write proper HTML.  An HTML document must start with the <html> tag and end with the </html> tag.  That is part of the standard.  If you don't do that, you are not compliant with the HTML standard.  Period.

     

    Chris Mattern
     

    Okay, once more with feeeeeeeeeeeling...

    This is not a rendering issue. A rendering issue this is not. Rendering issue? Not this!

    Have we chapter-and-versed this enough, yet?

    --
    Christopher Clark

    Ah, yes, SGML -- one of the original proofs that getting someone who doesn't program to design your specification is a terrible idea.  Optional (implied) tags for required elements require an inordinate amount of parser smarts, way beyond what it turns out is actually necessary in real applications.  Add in a surprisingly wide variety of tag syntaxes, any or all of which may be in use at the same time, and SGML is just a nightmare to parse correctly.

    Predictably, web browsers don't even try.  You can't use the perfectly valid construct <b/bold text/, for instance, and expect it to work in the real world.

    Also, note this, straight out of the HTML spec: Elements are not tags. Some people refer to elements as tags (e.g., "the P tag"). Remember that the element is one thing, and the tag (be it start or end tag) is another. For instance, the HEAD element is always present, even though both start and end HEAD tags may be missing in the markup.

    And to the guy who changed the subject to XHTML: yes, because XML intentionally doesn't have most of SGML's warts.  That doesn't say anything about HTML.

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to BG

    Anonymous:
    > While that claim is convenient its not really correct, for instance ANSI/SQL is not turing complete, and its still considered a programming langage. There's also Charity :)

    Some of my friends are considered smart. All depends on the fact, who considers.

    SQL is not a programming language. PL/SQL is.

     SQL is a declarative programming language. PL/SQL is an imperative language. I'm going to assume you fell into programming rather than coming from a CS undergrad where that's laid out in detail.
     

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to webzter
    webzter:

    I'm going to give everyone an out here. It's obviously valid HTML. It's most definately not valid XHTML.

    This will never hope to validate:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <title>foo</title>
    <p>foo</p>

    Yes, I know that wasn't your point, but it'd be nice to think that enough people are using XHTML these days that they've just mentally swapped the two terms HTML and XHTML. 

     Nobody said it was XHTML. They said it was HTML, and it is. We don't need you're out because we aren't actually wrong. Whether we tend to use xhtml or not really isn't relevant.
     

  • (cs)

    at my university CS104 is a required course for majors - it covers html, visual basic, how to use office, etc.  stupid shit

     

    the professor was even dumber than the class' content and couldn't teach out of a wet paper bag.      

  • (cs) in reply to Colin
    Anonymous:

    I recently spoke with a local university about doing some continuing education teaching.

    "... and now I'm going to present my absurd generalizations from that single data point." 

    Anonymous:

    I learned why the educational institutions are so far behind -
     

    Hurrah!  All the mysterious difficulties of higher education, revealed and resolved for our benefit! 

    Anonymous:

    ... if there is no text book they won't teach it

    And yet I had a good half-dozen courses in my undergrad years where we used draft textbooks written by the course instructor, and easily a dozen where we used no textbook at all.  And very few of the graduate courses I took used "textbooks", though a few did include technical books with some teaching apparatus (such as Stallings' Data and Computer Communications).

    Anonymous:

    ... and they are essentially controlled by the union.  The unions controlled when jobs were posted and essentially who gets them (based on a seniority system).

    What country was this?  In the US, the AAUP (American Association of University Professors) has some influence, but many professors do not belong to it, and there are few institutions where it's significant in scheduling courses.  Typically program directors, department chairs, and associate chairs make most of those decisions in consultation with curriculum committees, which are staffed by faculty; and those decisions more or less follow program plans coordinated with college- and university-level administration (deans, provosts, and their minions).

     

    Universities don't let just anyone teach because (accredited) universities employ scholars as teachers.  Teaching at a university is a career, not a hobby.  Unions have nothing to do with it.

    Anonymous:

    Those of us who want to throw our hat into the ring and share our experiences are essentially given a huge hurdle to jump over.
     

    Yes, the barriers to entry into university-level teaching are not negligible.  Nor should they be - and if they were, the university would put its accreditation at risk.

     

    If you're a working professional with real expertise in current technology, and you want to teach, and you don't want to enter the academy, then apply to an outfit like Learning Tree (which only employs working professionals as instructors).
  • JL (unregistered) in reply to Ornedan

    Anonymous:
    I'd say a fair criterion that a language needs to fill before it can be called a programming language would be being Turing-complete. HTML isn't.

    I recall that my professor for Theory of Programming Languages -- an implementor of a popular Scheme distribution -- argued that any input you give to a computer to produce a desired output was programming, including things like HTML and GIF files (which contain a primitive control structure: looping animation).  It's an unconventional viewpoint, but it does get you to think about where you're drawing the line.

    If you constrain yourself to Turing-completeness, you leave out a lot of stuff, like SQL, as people have mentioned.  Is someone programming if they write bison/yacc code?  I'd say they were, even if they were only pushing around context-free grammars.  How about a state machine-based AI for a game?  Or a file that tells an editor how to highlight code using regular expressions?  How about "Hello world" programs that restrict themselves to a non-Turing subset of the language that only produces output (which is also the case for many Postscript/PDF/Flash programs)?

    I think his viewpoint has merit, but it gets pooh-poohed by many programmers because they like to think they're doing something that's beyond mere mortals, as if programming has to be hard for it to count.

  • jokeyxero (unregistered)

    That seems familiar...

    In high school I trained two teachers on web development while I was in the class then they just regurgitated it to them. It kind of worked out, I made the templates for the school's website and the students filled in all the content while learning HTML and CSS (it was ugly...)

    During uni I had one professor who was teaching assembly and later comp architecture who could barely use a computer and whose code never ran correctly.

    During uni I had a different prof who was teaching us various intelligent systems and ai...we ended up teaching her A* because she explained it four different ways, each conflicting with the other.

     
    CAPTCHA: creative
     

  • WTF (unregistered) in reply to JD

    dumberer...Yes you did

  • Andrew (unregistered) in reply to Web Developer

    A document with no <html> tag may well be valid HTML, but one thing it isn't is valid XHTML, due to XML's explicit rule that there be one and only one "document element". Note though that I'm not criticizing your example, since you were kind enough to provide a DOCTYPE declaration. shizzle

  • (cs) in reply to SomeCoder

    Am I the only one who actually has the feeling he is/was learning something in the various "programming" classes? Every week I learn one or two new paradigms, Design by Contract, Prototyping Languages, etc. etc. Each with a 16+ hour lab assignment. Just created my first compiler, and working implementing OO-support in an existing one.

     For you die-hards that must be peanuts, but I'm quite it...so far. :)

  • (cs) in reply to Christopher Clark

    I can admit when I'm wrong.  I honestly could have sworn that HTML at one time required <html>, <head> and <body> tags to be compliant.  (No, I'm not thinking of XHTML.)  But I am seeing that not even HTML 4.0 or HTML 3.2 requires them.  I see some wording in the spec that might have misled me (like "Every HTML document must have a TITLE element in the HEAD section"), but the spec, the SGML, the validator, and this page all confirm that I was wrong.  I wish I knew where I got the idea from to begin with. 

  • zerrodefex (unregistered) in reply to Sean
    Anonymous:

    Anonymous:
    nice, reminds me of early this semester when they spent a whole lab hour explaining to people how to use notepad in a 200 level programming course for Com Sci Majors.

     

    The really sad part is people actually, honestly, complain if we go "get vim, run vimtutor, use vim" in cs201 anymore.  Apparently hand holding is required.
     

     

    I was in a database course once where the instructor bitched at me for going Right Click Start->Explore All Users->directory instead of going through My Computer as per her instructions.  Her rationale was that she was afraid that I'd get "lost" if I didn't follow her exactly.

  • (cs) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Anonymous:
    webzter:

    I'm going to give everyone an out here. It's obviously valid HTML. It's most definately not valid XHTML.

    This will never hope to validate:

    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <title>foo</title>
    <p>foo</p>

    Yes, I know that wasn't your point, but it'd be nice to think that enough people are using XHTML these days that they've just mentally swapped the two terms HTML and XHTML. 

     Nobody said it was XHTML. They said it was HTML, and it is. We don't need you're out because we aren't actually wrong. Whether we tend to use xhtml or not really isn't relevant.
     

    Well, then whoever assumes an HTML document needs an <HTML> tag to be valid is fucking stupid (misinformed). However, you would need that tag to have a valid XHTML document. My assertion was that, possibly, the morons (uninformed souls) that thought an <HTML> tag was needed on an HTML document had just been using XHTML and didn't really think about the difference.

  • (cs) in reply to SeeJay
    Anonymous:
    Sometimes I can believe that people are *that* dumb, but this one is really making me reach for that believability-o-meter.  Unless Gabrielle was high on crack or took a really good bonk on the noggin, there's no way someone *that* inept would be teaching a class.  No bloody way

    Actually I can believe this. I've encountered similar issues during my 'edumacation'...
    During a 10 week project period involving Oracle databases, we (the students) actually had to teach the teacher how to work with that cr#p. I only wish it was a test from him...

    And we had a Java course given by someone who only had a minor understanding of Pascal, and called "sleep" functions "slape" and a 'thread' was pronounced as 'treat'. Mind you, this was on a Dutch school, so English might not have been his best side, but still "Slape"?
    Oh and we didn't have work-classes for that course, but it was more like a writing exercise (pen and paper) than actual programming. No practical lessons or anything. Even the exam was paper only.

  • (cs) in reply to SeeJay
    Anonymous:

    Gabrielle was not a student in the Web Development course. She taught it.

    Ok, you had me until that line.  While I never went to uni with students *this* dumb, I saw my share of those who got into Comp Sci because it was good because it was "in demand".  Those that made it past first year never made it past second year.

     I've seen my share of dumb profs who said stupid things or couldn't teach worth beans.  My favourite was the network prof who gave us an example with the IP address 333.333.333.333. 

     

     I transferred to another university after my second year.  For some reason the "Computer Fundamentals" I took at the first school wasn't good enough for the second, and so I had to retake.  The real WTF is that they let me take a Java programming class.  Even funnier is that I had them back-to-back.  So at 9:00 I would learn how to use the calculator, and at 10:00 I would learn how to make the calculator.
     

  • (cs) in reply to webzter

    Oy.  Yes, an HTML document must have an HTML element, which must contain a HEAD and a BODY element, and the HEAD must contain a TITLE element.

    And you actually have to state the TITLE element with a tag.

    Not the HTML element, not the HEAD, not the BODY.  Just the TITLE.

    Just like in English, every sentence has to have a subject and a verb.

    But you don't actually have to state the subject.

    See? 

  • Alky (unregistered) in reply to zerrodefex

    Being penalized for using techniques not taught yet is ridiculous. If you want the student to use a specific technique, you MUST SPECIFY IT. If you don't say "don't use Strings" or "read the chars one at time", I'm going to use arrays!

  • Roel (unregistered) in reply to Dazed
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    This is NOT a WTF. The <html> element is implied in a html document

    Nope. According to the W3C spec, a page MUST have an HTML, HEAD, and BODY element. See: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html

    Oh dear. Here we go again. The element is required, but the tags are not. In other words the element is implicit, as already stated. See http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/global.html#h-7.3. Try it in a validator.

    Or even clearer, from http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.2.1:

    Some HTML element types allow authors to omit end tags (e.g., the <samp class="einst">P</samp> and <samp class="einst">LI</samp> element types). A few element types also allow the start tags to be omitted; for example, <samp class="einst"> HEAD</samp> and <samp class="einst">BODY</samp>. The HTML DTD indicates for each element type whether the start tag and end tag are required.

  • (cs) in reply to leeg

    Anonymous:
    Makes sense, they probably get worried about some random server getting crack attempts from inside the Uni, because they accidentally gave out a valid IP address which happened to be a real interface in area51a.mil.  Many textbooks will give clearly fatuous IP addresses (or failing that, RFC1918 ones) including ones which have 555 as the second octet, which Americans seem to find amusing.  In fact there's an episode of NCIS where the on-screen addresses have four-digit octets...but I'm not willing to bet against them being real servers expressed in octal ;-)

    You ever seen The Ring? (the American version)
    At one point the title character does a Google search, but the filmmakers are 'smart' enough to show the address bar, and what address do you see?
    "file://c|/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/..."
     

  • Franz Kafka (unregistered) in reply to Craig B
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    My favourite was the network prof who gave us an example with the IP address 333.333.333.333. 

    Your prof might have been smarter than you think. I've worked on a couple of very old operating systems where that *is* a valid IP address. What the comptuer would do is keep subtracting 256 from each quad until it got a result in [0,255]. I believe this used to be used in obfuscating links in web pages.

     

    B 

     

    333.333.333.333 is never a valid IP address. It doesn't matter what the computer thinks, ip addresses are dotted quads with each value being 0-255. This is the way ipv4 is defined (along with some other requirements).

     

    Just because it happens to work doesn't make it ok. Isn't that the major lesson here? 

  • (cs) in reply to Floor
    Anonymous:
    Actually, Postscript has flow control.

    And if you call a HTML file an program, why is an bitmap file not a program?
    It too is a series of instruction a computer can interpret to generate a picture.

     

    What about XPM?

     

    Anonymous:

    One of the tutors in a course I took while at university, was under pressure because over 60% of his class had failed the course for the last three years he had taught it (exams marked by another tutor to ensure no bias).

    If this happend again with our class he would be fired.  During the exam he got up, announced he was going to go and get a coffee and would not be back for exactly 25 mins.  Since his teaching was crap and most of us were going to fail as soon as he was out of the room the brain boxes started answering the questions as for everyone else to reword. 25 mins later most people had finished the exam and when the tutor arrived back right on time handed in their papers and walked out.  No one wanted to report it because it was a required course and it would have ment re-sitting and probably failing the exam.  Now days I look back and wish I or somone else had reported it, so the next years class didn't have to suffer his incompetence.

     

    Was he the sort of weirdo who would take a fixed-length coffee break Just Because, or did he stop being stupid for long enough to deliberately give the class this sort of out (hence prolong his own career)?
  • Utoxin (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:
    Anonymous:

    My favourite was the network prof who gave us an example with the IP address 333.333.333.333. 

    Your prof might have been smarter than you think. I've worked on a couple of very old operating systems where that *is* a valid IP address. What the comptuer would do is keep subtracting 256 from each quad until it got a result in [0,255]. I believe this used to be used in obfuscating links in web pages.

     

    B 

     

    333.333.333.333 is never a valid IP address. It doesn't matter what the computer thinks, ip addresses are dotted quads with each value being 0-255. This is the way ipv4 is defined (along with some other requirements).

     

    Just because it happens to work doesn't make it ok. Isn't that the major lesson here? 

    I just have to have fun with this one. While you're correct that 333.333.333.333 isn't a valid dotted base ten quad, you're incorrect that an IP MUST be a dotted base ten quad. That's simply the human readable format. My favorite way of obfuscating IP addresses is to take the binary value, and convert it straight to decimal.

    This is a valid IP Address: 92672
    In dotted quad form: 192.168.1.1

  • Utoxin (unregistered) in reply to Utoxin

    Hrm... except I think I did the math wrong. I'm distracted. Regardless, the point stands. :)

  • Why? (unregistered)

    "Gabrielle's grasp of "documents" versus "programs" was just as painfully embarrassing. After editing an HTML document, she'd always say, "OK, I'm now saving my HTML program and will run it in Internet Explorer." I won't even get into how much Gabrielle struggled with doing actual web development in PHP."

    I know it's pedantic but the L in HTML stands for Language (HyperText Markup Language) so an HTML document is a program and it does run in IE.

  • Pedersen (unregistered) in reply to Franz Kafka
    Anonymous:

    333.333.333.333 is never a valid IP address. It doesn't matter what the computer thinks, ip addresses are dotted quads with each value being 0-255. This is the way ipv4 is defined (along with some other requirements).

     

    Just because it happens to work doesn't make it ok. Isn't that the major lesson here? 

    Well, if we're going to be pedantic, then it's time to point out that no, IP addresses are not, at the lower levels, dotted quads, but rather a single unsigned 32 bit integer. Each quad represents one byte of that integer.

     

    But, only if we're being pedantic :) 

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