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To explain the title of this blog I return to my time at University when I decided to choose a mixture of ’softer’ multimedia and web courses alongside ‘harder’ programming ones. I had selected a particular degree course called Computer Studies which gave me free rein to pick and choose whichever courses I wished from the module catalogue provided by the School of Computing. This immediately labelled me a troublemaker among the academic staff so I found myself living up to that when the mood took me.
While learning to program in C, we were instructed to name our variables and functions using simple, meaningful conventions, which myself and some friends quickly became bored with. We ended up using very unconventional naming strategies, such as synchronised_shouting_at_monkey_baskets to store a simple integer.
This was quickly brought to light by the academic staff leading the course and we were duly reprimanded for our mischief. We were warned to use the more conventional modes of naming recommended by the staff and that any future use of such names would result in us receiving poor marks. We did as we were told, pretty much, since it wasn’t worth having our education spoiled by petty academics who couldn’t see a joke. Exept…
While coding something for an exercise, I named a variable erudite_mollusc, which was quickly spotted by the tutor running the particular tutorial session. Fortunately he had something of a sense of humour so when I was quizzed about my unusual naming of said variable I explained to him that it was relevant and a valid name for a variable. How, asked the bemused tutor and so I gave my reasoned argument:
Erudite - having or showing profound knowledge; essentially something or someone who can provide information freely and without error, as any good variable should
Mollusc - possibly containing pearls of wisdom.
They left me alone after that!
After much resistance I have decided to give in and enter the dreaded world of BLOG. It seems that it is as much a part of a professional web developers tool set as a good text editor and and ftp link these days so may as well dive in.
I never felt that I had that much to say on a blog which is one of the main reasons why I haven’t really bothered before now, but after several years building my skill set in web & multimedia development and having several projects that I would like to publicise, I may have something to put online.
I hope to provide a mixture of helpful articles on real world web development as well as back up my woefully neglected portfolio site crashspace.co.uk, which I hope to be updating over the next few months.