Its that time of year, you know when most students stress about coursework deadlines, essay revision, etc... It is an inescapable reality of university it seems, and one that I have been acquainted with again. However today has been a brief head above water sort of day, even with all the different languages.

Networks
We start the day with Python. As part of my networks and securities assignment 2 I have to write about a guessing game that communicates between a server and client using a network. Naturally it is easier to write about a project that you have actually done, so throughout the tutorials we have been creating the game. I will hold my hands up that I have never programmed network applications before and networks in general have been a little bit of a dark art to me, making this application has been fairly challenging for me. The Pythons select.select function in particular baffled me until this morning. Enter Dave Evans our lecture and archmage of all things networky, who helped me get a handle (you see what I did there handle... magic cauldron... mixing it with a handle... yeah ok it was bad). Hopefully I should be able to finish the application relatively soon and the essay should be simple (famous last words).

Databases
Networks done we move onto SQL. This is the first of my assignments due in, and has been chugging along this weekend. I have the layout of my tables done in SQL including primary/foreign keys, I just have to finish constraints and a couple of triggers before its on to the "client" side application to test the database. I have had a stroke of luck as it happens with my database, we have been given either MySQL using phpMyAdmin or PostgreSQL using phpPgAdmin to program our database. Most students have gone the MySQL route (lured in by the pretty interface perhaps) and hit the errno 150 wall of unhelpful error messages. Without knowing that the MySQL route was available I am using PostgreSQL, which if you listen to the other students sounds approximately a million times better, serendipity I think so. 

Graphics
We round off the day with a bit of C++. Its the last assignment that I have to hand in (Jan) so its in its infancy still, for the first part of the assignment I had to create a 2D sketchpad (a bit of a MS paint affair). But part 2 is a 3D renderer, by it's nature there is a lot of ground work to be done before anything is draw to the screen. That's were I am currently, today I broke the back of my class for 4x4 matrices. There isn't much more to say about graphics at the moment, I think its going to be my project for the Christmas break.

My name is Elliot and I haven't used SQL before. (hello Elliot)

Ok that isn't strictly true, I have used a few little bits within Access over the years but I've never done anything passed querying a database. But today marks my first attempt to create a database, from scratch in SQL, and surprisingly it doesnt seam to bad (I'm convinced I'll live to regret those words). The at first scary looking Notepad++ screens are demystifying themselves as I forge forward into the new world of databases. A world that doesnt appear to be the bleak waste filled only with disgruntled DBAs that I thought is was.

I like many application programmers have had a cold shoulder relationship with databases for some time. So naturally there was some contempt on my part when I started a database module, and I have suffered from a case of the "I'll get to that later I've got C++ programming to do first"s. However having sunk my teeth into it I'm not finding databases to be quite the sour grape that I expected, the challenge of database design is not without its own interests (normalisation for example which is definitely a surprise interest). 

I have to say I think the animosity that people have towards databases comes from the limited scope that we see them in at school. I first used databases when I learnt how to use Access during secondary school in my early teens. As I recall it was a database about cars (it was an all boys school, I'm not saying they knew their demographic when they designed the syllabus, but they totally knew their demographic) with maybe 30 cars included in a single table affair. Looking back I can see why I lost interest with databases, it was explained why databases are used but the full scope that they are used in wasn't. I couldn't see where they fitted in and why they were so important, maybe part of that was to do with my mind not understanding the true scale of the world and the data that is produced these days. Nonetheless there is definitely room to improve how it is taught.

If databases were introduced with a larger database with say hundreds of records (that is a lot when your 12/13) and a number of tables, it would be easier to understand why we need databases and their importance. If designed well it could even be taught at first in only one table for simplicity. Then as students progress through years more complicated aspects can be included. A world that better understands database can surely only be an improvement.