John Godfrey

Thanks everyone for the insights.

Liutauras Vilda wrote:
There are few mandatory modules and optional  you can/have to choose from, for instance:

Software and programming I; II; III - I used to be Java, now is Python, II a bit more advanced topics (Java/Scala you can choose); III Scala. 3 practical programming courseworks to do.

Programming Language Paradigms - involves actual programming (Ruby, Kotlin, Racket, Haskell, Clojure, Erlang, Prolog), 3 practical programming courseworks to do.

Enterprise computing - Java/Scala involves actual programming, design patterns...other heavy stuff.

Mobile and Wireless Computing - includes mobile applications programming. Contains coursework to create an Android app.

Data Structures and Algorithms - includes programming. 3 programming courseworks to do.

Thank you especially Liutauras - however, I think these are modules from the 3 year BSc course and not the 1 year MSc course I'm looking at.  It's a shame because as Campbell said, it does sound like a good course and exactly what I'm after.  Unfortunately it's significantly more expensive than the MSc and it would take 4 years to complete if I did it in the evenings as I am thinking of doing, versus 2 years for the MSc.  I've taken Tim Moores' advice and enquired about how practical the course actually is, and which languages I'd be using, as the webpage isn't particularly clear.

Thanks guys!  I missed these posts until just now, didn't mean to seem rude by not replying!

Thanks Campbell - I just checked, it does come up on their list as CITP (partial).  Some other courses I've seen list more accreditations, but surprisingly, the course at the most prestigious institution I've looked at (UCL) doesn't come up at all!

Hi all,

I've been reading a few posts on here, as well as job vacancy ads, and the overwhelming sense I get is that a computer science degree is pretty much mandatory in order to get a job as a developer.  My question is, would a 1 year MSc in Computer Science be considered equivalent to a 3 year BSc in the same subject?  Specifically, a course like this - http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/2017/postgraduate/programmes/TMSCOSCI_C/ - designed for people like me that hold a degree in an unrelated subject.

I'd appreciate any insight from people who have taken this path, or anyone who hires developers.

Cheers,

John

I just worked out how to solve a problem I was having using EL to print attributes of a VideoData object in the JSP with ${videoData.title}, but it involved modifying the supplied VideoData.java - is this allowed, or do I need to find some other way round the problem?  The instructions for this assignment say I "can use these files without modification", but do I have to?

A little context: I was getting a blank page and "javax.el.PropertyNotFoundException: Property 'title' not readable on type com.javaranch.drive.videos.VideoData" in localhost.[today's date].log.   The best I could do was print out the output of the object's toString() method, but any attempt to access its properties failed.  I added the example Employee class and tried accessing its properties, and that worked fine, so I could then see that the public access modifier was the difference, and once I made VideoData public, it also worked as expected.

Also, I haven't got as far as working with the booleans dvd and vhs, but I noticed that their accessor methods are called inDVD() and inVHS(), shouldn't they be isDVD() and isVHS() in order to work with ${videoData.dvd} and ${videoData.vhs}?  So I need to know if I'm able to change these myself or if I have to find another way around it.

I worked it out! This webapp's web.xml was declaring that it conformed to an older version of JSP (I think I may have copy/pasted it from an example I found on the web when I was looking at other examples).  As soon as I changed it to the version specified in the example in the Tomcat instructions Greg sent, EL worked again as before.

So you were right Greg, it was a version problem.  Thanks for the pointer!

Now back to the assignment - I imagine there'll be more questions to come . . .

Thanks Greg - unfortunately, I tried the jsp you posted and I get the same result, the browser simply displays the EL as written (so in this case, "${text}").

When I run the most recent assignment I did using EL (reverse2), it works as expected, so I wondered if it had anything to do with using ActionServlet, as that's the obvious difference between the working and non-working uses of EL.  However, I tested this by changing the implementation of VideoServlet so that it extended only HttpServlet as before, and I still couldn't get EL working.  I even went so far as to copy the working code from Reverse2Servlet.java into VideoServlet.java and the html from reverse.jsp into listvideos.jsp (changing only the necessary parts like the class name, and targets of the RequestDispatcher and action) and still the same result - everywhere I use EL, it just prints the expression literally.

So, could it be some kind of setting I've inadvertently changed for this webapp in Tomcat, or in the Ant script maybe?  I tried remaking my Ant script, but it hasn't made a difference - is there something I can check in the Tomcat manager app perhaps?  But then, I have the same problem with bee, so was there something I did differently for reverse2?

Really confused now!  I'd really appreciate any pointers.

I'm trying to get my head around this assignment, and while taking my first tentative steps I've noticed that I can't seem to use EL in the JSP to read attributes I wrote to the ServletData object in the ActionHandler.  It just displays the EL tag as literal text.

Looking at the provided bee example (which works fine), it doesn't use EL, but embedded Java code.  And swapping between the 2 approaches on both JSPs gives me the same results, embedded code works fine in listvideos.jsp as well, and EL just displays the tag in bee.jsp.  But that doesn't solve my problem because the instructions for 4a say to use EL (and JSTL, which I haven't gotten round to using yet) to build the table displaying the data.

Am I missing something about EL within the Front Controller pattern?  I've tried setting the attribute the ServletData object's underlying HttpServletRequest object using:

servletData.getRequest().setAttribute( "testMessage", "text to display in the JSP." );

but it behaves the same, only displaying properly when I use embedded Java.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

Lisa Austin wrote:

Xa Acual wrote:I submitted Assignment 1 and 2 today...

Ah cool.  I'm still trying to get Assignment 1 approved.  lol

I'm actively doing the Cattle Drive as well - resumed recently after a break of a few years (!) - just finished OOP, should be getting my second Moose Head any day now.

I think it's a great way to get experience, with task-based learning and feedback from people waaaay cleverer than me!

Good luck guys.

Thanks Rob!

I've been messing around with Java to create an application to compare MD5 checksums. It reads in each checksum/file name line by line as a String object, and compares the two relevant lines using the compareTo() method of the String class.

The logic I'm using uses a Boolean called sumsMatch, which I initialise as true, and set to false if the program encounters any checksums that aren't identical.

My question is this: is this bad practice? I'm thinking that it could lead to false positives, although I haven't come across any in my testing.

Would it be better to initialise sumsMatch as false instead, and make the rest of the program more complicated?

Great, thanks Marilyn.

I submitted my first attempt at OOP-1 a few days ago, and heard back pretty quickly from Katrina that it had been forwarded to Marilyn for nitpicking. I haven't heard anything since, just wondering if she might not have got it? Should I PM her?

It's not the page numbers so much as the chapter numbers - it seems that the chapter numbers suggested before starting the Cattle Drive (1, 3, then 4, 7 and the first half of 9) correspond to the 6th edition, but the chapter numbers to be read before OOP don't (it currently says 2, 3, 6 and the last half of 7). I'm still reading through the alternatives suggested by Margaret earlier in the thread, but they seem to make sense. Maybe someone more familiar with the OOP section could confirm?

FWIW, every reference to a page number I've come across so far has had an accurate 6th edition version as well, so no worries there. :-)

I just had a very similar experience to Ed - preparing to tackle OOP-1, I was quite a way through Chapter 3 of Just Java 2 6th edition before I realised simultaneously that:

a) I'd already read it as instructed on the initial "Preparation" page

b) It probably wasn't what I should be reading

I found this thread, so I've got a good idea what I should be reading, but could I suggest updating http://www.javaranch.com/drive/3/index.jsp to maybe include the chapter numbers for the 6th edition?