Re: Is my CS instructor nuts?

Mark Gillan wrote:

I've been taking weekend courses in C. Our professor said that in the
coming weeks, our first project will be an audio spectrum analyzer. I
don't know the first thing about audio, let alone what an audio
spectrum analyzer is used for.

Seems as if you are going to find out ;-)


A few other students think that this
is far too advanced for our skill level, and beyond most of the
class' knowledge. I agree. Is this really a project for just
beginning programmers?

It might easily be /very/ suitable for beginners. OTOH it could be a
massive mis-judgement, I doubt it, but it /is/ possible. It depends on
what the project will involve.

For instance, say that the big parts of a spectrum analyser are:
(a) something to gather sound (from a microphone or some such)
(b) something to do the hard arithmetic work of finding the spectra
(c) something to display the results in a pleasing way.
It might well be that the instructor has (a) and (b) already sorted,
and knows that there's enough stuff in your programming environment
that you /will/ be able to handle (c) by the time you've finished. In
that case you have an interesting project that gives you a fun
end-product, some small experience in working with sound and other
numerical data, rather more experience in working with pre-packaged
APIs (a very important skill in itself); and lots of practise putting
together a working UI with graphical display.

Or maybe the breakdown is different, and the bulk of your work will be
in a different area. Whatever, unless the instuctor has misjudged you,
there won't be more than you can handle. Of course, you wouldn't be
able to handle it /today/ -- if you could then what's the point of the
exercize ?

-- chris
.