ACM Student Membership

ACM Quick Join Application Form
“Join today as an ACM Student Member with a Digital Library subscription and receive access to: 2,200 FREE online courses and 500 FREE online books, over 40 computing publications online and over one million bibliographic citations AND you’ll also receive a FREE ACM Flip-Top Calculator while supplies last.” The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) is one of the two most prestigious professional organizations in the computer field (the other is IEEE Computing). I highly recommend to join in order to receive the professional journals that will help you keep up with the changes and issues in our field.

Confessions of a Terrible Programmer

Kickin the Darkness: Confessions of a Terrible Programmer
“I’m a terrible programmer. … I still put bugs in my code, use the wrong types for variables or subprogram arguments, forget to make the right library calls, mess up the expression in an if statement, and on and on and on now for 25 years. …The odd thing though about the programs I design and write is that once they’re delivered to the customer or as a baseline release they usually work like they’re supposed to, which would seem to be surprising given that such a terrible programmer wrote them.”  The author of this blog entry has some excellent suggestions on how to deliver good code when you don’t naturally write good code. Recommended (via Reddit)

Computer Programming Grading Rubric

Computer Programming Grading Rubric, CECS Grading These guidelines are an excellent self-check to see if your programs are professional, amateur or unacceptable. It clearly identifies important quality characteristics (specifications, readability, reusablity, documentation, delivery and efficiency) and clearly describes what is expected.

Sample Certification Problem

Wendell’s Blog In this posting on Wendell’s blog there is a sample question from the certification exam that you should already be able to answer. Wendell Odum has written some excellent CCNA exam preparation books and so far his blog seems pretty good too. Check it out!

Microsoft Compatibility Pack for Office 2007 File Formats

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats
“By installing the Compatibility Pack to Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003, you will be able to open, edit, and save files using the file formats new to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.” Install this tool in older versions of Microsoft Office in order to use the new formats without needing to buy the new Office 2007.

IP Addressing and Subnetting

Real Networkers Don’t Use Decimal, Part 1 and Part 2. These are my PowerPoint presentations introducing IP Addressing and simple subnetting. As you can tell from the title this delves into the binary form of addresses which I find easier to work with.

Why Your Code Sucks

http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=71730 “If you are like most, and possibly even all, programmers (this author humblely included) then your code sucks. Maybe not all of it, and maybe not all the time, but certainly some of it, some of the time.” A succinct article identifying common coding problems and how to avoid them. (via dzone)

Todays Best Entry-Level Salaries – Computer careers make the cut

MSN Careers – Todays Best Entry-Level Salaries – Career Advice Article
“…Salary offers for those with degrees in management information systems/business data processing have increased 4.2 percent for an average starting salary of $47,648. Those who hold computer science degrees should expect average starting salaries of $53,396, up 4.1 percent from last year, and information sciences graduates will receive an average offer of $50,852, a 4.6 percent increase.” (via Ralph DeArazoza)

How to Learn More and Study Less

How to Learn More and Study Less | zen habits
“Time spent studying does not equal learning. More studying time won’t help if the way you are studying is flawed to begin with.” This blog entry goes one to suggest some good ways to increase the efficiency of your studying.(via digg)

Becoming a part of the Firefox quality assurance process

Becoming a part of the Firefox quality assurance process “I sometimes receive e-mails from readers who use open source software and want to help make it better, but don’t really know where to start. There are many ways for users to contribute even if they don’t know how to program, and testing is one of them. With a highly inclusive project like Firefox, becoming part of the quality assurance process can be a very rewarding experience.”  (via digg)   See also https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/university/ for other ways to participate.