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COMP2100/2500
Lecture 15: FAQ I

Summary

I will prepare a lecture based on questions submitted by students in the preceding week.

Aims

• To clear up any common misunderstandings.

• To give everyone a chance to look back at what we have covered so far.

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This year's questions

1. I've been interested and mostly confused about what the XML triggers for each visitX function actually mean/do, so if you have time it'd be great if you could go through them and make it clear what each XML tag we consider does (and what further tags / attributes / data it could validly contain). I'm aware that's a fairly big ask but if you're inclined to do it, it'd be much appreciated.

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Some useful questions and answers from previous years

Since there's lots of useful stuff here, I won't delete these. Who knows, you may find the answer to your question is here already.

1. What is XML and where is it implemented in the real world? [2]

   The eXtensible Markup Language is a way of adding structure to text content. It is starting to replace HTML as the language of the web. It is used in some advanced document management systems. It is used for information transfer for e-commerce. The idea of structuring data so that it can be processed by software is a very important one. It is being "implemented" everywhere now. Even Microsoft is interested. The next version of MSOffice will have XML in it. The major web browsers now understand not only XML but also XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations), a general stylesheet language for transforming XML data in a similar sort of way to what we're doing with Eiffel in the project. Look up XML in Google and see what you get.

2. Why all the recursive data types?

   Because this is a fundamental part of the study of computer science, one of the most important ideas you will run into in your entire course. Recursive data structures show up everywhere.

3. What are the scope & range of man and info commands? How do we know which one is definitive?

   That's a hard one. You need to learn to look at information and judge for yourself. Keep an eye open for things that don't look right. Check on the web. Treat documentation as a pile of evidence in a mystery; sift through it for clues. (It's unfortunate. I wish there was a better answer, but that's just the way it is.)

4. How difficult should we be finding the homeworks & labs?

   Impossible to say. It depends on your experience and ability. Even among trained developers with jobs and years of experience there is a large range of productivity, with the best outperforming the average by a factor of at least ten. From the show of hands in class the other day, it seems that almost everyone is completing the homework in about three hours per week or less. How many of those are cheating I can't say.

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