Not higher not education

1. Teachers in colleges can’t teach you to be good specialist.
Give yourself a straight answer to this: people that teach you work in colleges getting paid modestly, don’t they? That’s because they cannot qualify for good positions on the labor market. They lack experience as well as qualification. The ones that don’t lack it – leave. It all different in world’s best universities, but we’re not speaking of those now. What’s your opinion: will a successful finance specialist go work for a bank earning $150,000 a year or teach in a college earning $60,000 a year? It often happens that looser-professionals teach in colleges, ‘cause they were unable to find a different job. There are exclusions, but they are scarce. I met good teachers in colleges, they really exist there. But that’s not even minority, they are very few. A good teacher not only gives you theory, but emphasizes the practical side of his subject. Most teachers don’t care about practice.2. Teachers in most colleges praise science but despised professional realization
You should look for the roots of it in the fact that most teachers failed as professionals. And the only way to find an excuse is that professional realization is unworthy occupation. If you attend lectures and then participate in scientific conferences – you’re swell. And if you skip a lot because you work – well, you get a totally different treatment. Teachers are like hermit-monks. Profession is vanity of vanities for them. They’ve devoted themselves to serving god science and they pray write scientific articles all day long. Maybe the aim is noble, but it’s useless in real life.
3 Wrong etalon of comparison.
College students often compare themselves to school-students and are proud to be better. This illusion continues until a person starts thinking on getting a job and turns his gaze to another side. In fact if students compared themselves to working specialists they would see that they are getting to their goal in tiny-bitsy steps. Don’t be average in college. Because if you do “like everyone does” you’ll get the result “everyone gets”. Most students in a college are randoms, they don’t really have any other options. Perhaps they were forced to enter the college by their parents and they have no slightest idea of their future profession. This happens a lot. Don’t compare yourself to your mates. Your finished projects and your job successes will serve the best criteria for your knowledge and skills. Don’t compare yourself to “the faceless crowd”; compare yourself to “the market”.4 Professional studies is only a small part of knowledge you get in colleges.
When you come to work you’ll be asked what you can do, not what you have learned. Your boss will be interested in what you know and able to do on the requirement list for the job: you are given a specific task, but you don’t get explanation on how to do it, and he expects results in due time. Good luck! You learn history in college, and you are going to work as a bank operator – is this brings you closer to your goal or farther from it? Technically, you know more. Does it mean it brings you closer? But in fact, with every semester you have less and less time to gain valuable professional knowledge and its amount remains the same. So practically – you’re farther from your goal.5. College does not set a goal of “making you a highly-qualified specialist”.
It’s hard to hit a goal when you don’t aim it. In college they make you an all-round specialist. You get something like “second secondary education”. They only forget to mention that a person who studies everything knows nothing. Do you remember the three university goals: science, general education and professional education? What do you think had to be cut up in order to add science and general education? Right: professional disciplines. And do you still think that university’s goal is to make you a highly-qualified specialist?6. If a person studies more than two subjects at once, he’s wasting his time.
This seems wrong after school education. You only get the truth of it at work. Classes are so short in school not because it’s effective, but because a school-student is still a child, he can’t keep concentrated for more than an hour. But often switches between tasks prevent your brain to think effectively. At work you’ll need to perform as an adult, and there switching between task often will strongly reduce your efficiency. Why do you think you can prepare for exams in no time? You simply do not multi-task and your effectiveness increases in times. Learning something in small pieces is utterly stupid. Just imagine you’re dieting only six hour a week – how soon will the result come?7. In college a person only touches the subject slightly.
Let’s assume you study something for two semesters. You have two lectures and two practical classes a week. That some serious approach as for college. So how many hours does that make? Four classes is 2 academic hours (1.5 usual hours) – that’s 6 hours a week. We study for four month in the first semester: September, October, November, and December. 4 more in the second one: February, March, April, May. In total: 8 month, 4.5 week each. 6 hour each week. That makes 216 hour a year. Just so you know, my dear students, that there is 180 working hours in month. Any annual course can be learned in one and a half month, and if you really want (or need) in one month.8. You are being taught most general, practically useless and outdated knowledge.

9 Practical skills are 10 times more valuable than theory.
In real life you often have to DO something at work. If you know how to do it, or you think that you know, it does not necessarily mean you can actually do it. You know smoking is bad for you, but can you quit? You know doing sports is the right thing to do, but are you actually working out? You know foreign languages are good for your career, but can you actually learn a few? In life all that matters is practice. The more knowledge you have without practice, the less is their value. How are you going to decide which knowledge is wrong, old, misused, and which really work? You never thought about this? Welcome to the real world. You can learn traffic regulation on A or B, but you still won’t be able to drive. Theory is a good ground for practice. Let assume you are building a wall: bricks are practice, grout is theory. Without grout (theory) the wall will be unstable, but without bricks (practice) your theory is useless. So, gentlemen, divide your 5 years in college by 10. Half a year – that’s the true result of your longstanding “effort”. You want proof? When you get a job and work for half a year you’ll see that your college knowledge doubled.You have reached a new level
Level 10

1 Elly, About the strong typing of objects
- Hey, Amigo! - Hey, Elly! - I’m in a cheerful mood today, so I’ll tell you something very interesting. I’ll start with primitive types in Java. - In Java, every object and every variable has its hardcoded immutable type. The type of a variable is defined during the program compilation, the type of an object - during its creation. The type of the newly created object and/or the variable remains the same all their lifetime. Example:

2 Risha, List of basic types
- Hey, Amigo! - Hey, Risha! - You already learned the basics of Java syntax, but I wanna tell you some things more detailed. - Today I’ll tell you a little about the primitive types and how much memory they occupy. You’ll need it, and perhaps even today. These types are:
3 Elly, Type conversion. Type widening and narrowing.
- And here goes the fun. I’ll tell you about the type conversion. Though the types of variables are always the same, there’s a place where you can convert types. It’s an assignment. - You can assign variables of different types to each other. By so doing, the value taken from a variable of one type will be converted to a value of another type and assigned to the second variable. - So there are two types of conversion: the widening and narrowing. The widening is like moving things from a small basket into a bigger one - the operation is smooth and trouble-free. Narrowing is like putting things from a big basket into a smaller one: there may not be enough space and something will have to be thrown away. - Here are types sorted by the size of the «basket»:
- char is the same “basket” as short, but there is one point: when coping values from short to char, values less than 0 are discarded. When coping from char to short, values greater than 32,767 are discarded.
- When converting integers to fractions, low-order digits may be discarded. But since the fractional number is meant to store an approximate value, then such an assignment is allowed.


4 Diego, Integer type conversion tasks
- Hey, Amigo! Here are your tasks on conversation of integer types. You need to put cast operator where needed, so the program compiles:Tasks | |
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1 |
1. Type cast and conversation byte a = 1234; int b = a; byte c = a * a; int d = a / c; |
2 |
2. Type cast and conversation int a = 15; int b = 4; float c1 = a / b; float c2 = (float) a / b; float c3 = (float) (a / b); |
3 |
3. Type cast and conversation float f = 333.50; int i = f; byte b = i; |
4 |
4. Type cast and conversation short number = 9; char zero = '0'; char nine = zero + number; |
5 |
5. Type cast and conversation short number = 9; char zero = '0'; short nineCode = zero + number; |
5 Elly, Conversion to the type String
- Now we’ll have a small, but interesting topic - String conversion. - In Java, you can convert any type of data to the type String. - Sounds promising. - In fact, it’s even better. You can implicitly convert almost all types to String. This is best shown when you add two variables: String and «non-String». In such case the non-String variable is forcibly converted to String. - Here, take a look at a couple of examples:
6 Diego, Tasks on conversion of types in general



7 Elly, Real types
- Here are a couple of interesting things about the real (that are fractional) types. Let’s start with this example:


8 Elly, Literals
- And finally, a professor-style lecture by Risha, which is a whole lot of useless information. All lecturers love this. This one may seem hard to understand for you. So just have a look and do not give much thought to it. - OK, then I’m ready. - Today I’ll tell you what literals are. Literals are all the data stored directly in the Java code. Examples:

9 Professor, Lecture on types
- Great! Finally, this is my favorite topic - type conversion. I even remember when my professor told me about it. It was very “fascinating”. I didn’t understand anything then. But of course, you’ll understand everything thanks to these awesome lectures. Here they are: Java Conversions and Promotions (Oracle Documentation) Data Type Casting (Type Conversion) Java Cast and Conversions Widening and Narrow conversions10 Julio
- Wow! Well, you’re really smart, Amigo! So many things learned in just two weeks! You’re like a monster. By the way, how about some fun after two weeks of slave labor?11 Captain Squirrels
(- I’ve helped you out. Do it at home.) Homework (10 units) - Hello, soldier! - Good morning, sir! - I have some awesome news for you. Here’s a quick check to reinforce your skills. Do it every day, and you’ll enhance your skills real quick. Tasks are specially designed to do in Intellij IDEA.Additional tasks to do in Intellij Idea | |
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1 |
1. The correct answer is: d=2.941 Add one type casting operator to obtain d = 2.941 |
2 |
2. The correct answer is: d=5.5 Add one type casting operator to obtain d = 5.5 |
3 |
3. The correct answer is: d=1.0 Add one type casting operator to obtain d = 1.0 |
4 |
4. Big salary Display to the screen the message «I don’t want to study Java, I want a big salary» 40 times following the example. Example: I do not want to learn Java, I want a big salary do not want to learn Java, I want a big salary do not want to learn Java, I want a big salary o not want to learn Java, I want a big salary not want to learn Java, I want a big salary not want to learn Java, I want a big salary … |
5 |
5. The number of letters Read from the keyboard 10 strings and count the number of different letters in them (for all 26 letters of the alphabet). Display the result to the screen. Example output: a 5 b 8 c 3 d 7 … z 9 |
6 |
6. Constructors of the class Human Write a class Human with 6 fields. Come up with 10 different constructors for it and implement them. Each constructor should have meaning. |
7 |
7. Move a minimum of static modifiers Move as few static modifiers as possible so the code compiles. |
8 |
8. Array of string lists Create an array whose elements are lists of strings. Fill the array with any data and display them to the screen. |
9 |
9. Identical words in the list Read from the keyboard 20 words, fill a list with them. Count the number of identical words in the list. Result should be a Map <String, Integer>. The key of the map should be a unique string, the value - count of this string in the list. Display to the screen contents of the map. |
10 |
10. Five largest numbers Create a list of integers. Read 20 integers from the keyboard and fill a list with them. Create a method to extract numbers from the list safely: int safeGetElement(ArrayList<Integer> list, int index, int defaultValue) The method should return an element of the list by its index. If an exception occurs in this method, you need to catch it, and return the defaultValue. |
Bonus tasks | |
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1 |
1. Program doesn’t compile and run. Fix it. Task: The program shows how HashMap works. The program reads from the keyboard a set of pairs (a number and a string), places them in a HashMap and displays to the screen the contents of HashMap. |
2 |
2. Add new functionality to the program. Old Task: The program should display a pair (a number and a string) entered from the keyboard. New task: The program should store in HashMap pairs (a number and a string) entered from the keyboard. An empty string means the end of input. Numbers may be repeated. Strings are always unique. Input data must not be lost! The program should display the contents of HashMap to the screen. Example input: 1 Stop 2 Look Example output: 1 Stop 2 Look |
3 |
3. Learning and practicing algorithm. Task: Read from the keyboard 30 numbers. Display to the screen the 10th and 11th minimum numbers. Hint: The minimal number is the 1st minimum. The next minimum is the 2nd minimum Explanation 1: 1 15 6 63 5 7 1 88 The first minimum is 1 The second minimum is 1 The third minimum is 5 The fourth minimum is 6 Explanation 2: 0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21 24 27 30 33 36 39 42 45 48 51 54 57 60 63 66 69 72 75 78 81 84 87 36 0 6 9 39 42 78 12 15 30 33 63 66 69 3 81 84 87 45 48 51 54 57 60 72 75 18 21 24 27 69 36 0 18 21 6 27 9 39 42 78 12 33 63 66 3 81 84 87 45 15 30 48 51 54 57 60 72 75 24 The first minimum is 0 The second minimum is 3 ... The tenth minimum is 27 The eleventh minimum is 30 Example input: 36 0 6 9 39 42 78 12 15 30 33 63 66 69 3 81 84 87 45 48 51 54 57 60 72 75 18 21 24 27 Example output: 27 30 |
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