Indian engineering colleges are terrible at approaching technology

You might remember the good old Turbo C++ IDE from your common engineering classes. While the nostalgia inducing GUI can look like a smurf threw up pixels on your screen, there are actual reasons why you'll never see a qualified programmer use something that almost literally resembles a makeshift BSoD.

In fact, this isn't a problem that only I've decided to speak up about. Engineering students have long since taken to sites like StackOverflow to express their concerns about this as well :

Here's an example.

And here's another.

Now, I don't deny that there might be some hidden superpowers that might make Turbo C an excellent IDE/Compiler, but taking what's common from the answers in the links above, there is a genuine reason to stay away from it: Turbo C is just way too old.

Here's the thing: The way technology works, something obsolete is almost as good as irrelevant.

When it comes to technology, it's in its nature to keep itself changing by constantly updating to newer and more efficient practices. No matter how popular a product in this field is right now, if it can't keep up with these changes, it will soon be forgotten.

There are very few exceptions to this, and I'm sure half of you are already shaking your heads :
But Arvind, for learning programming basics, Turbo C works just fine. Any C++ program that works in a newer compiler will also work on Turbo C, so what's the big deal?
Actually no, it won't. Remember when I said that technology keeps updating itself to follow newer standards? Well some of these standards are not backwards compatible. So if you tried to compile a newer C++ program across an old C compiler, it isn't necessarily going to work.

My issue with the way colleges here teach technology isn't just restricted to the fact they use software older than I am (which is a pretty big problem by itself), but I'm also unhappy with the entire mindset in which these things are taught.
Applying logic and critical thinking isn't generally encouraged. Programs are given to students, and they're expected to memorize the flow for the time being. The components and elements will be explained, but their logical use cases and why they need to be used there are left in the dark.

The entire idea of "finding a solution to the problem" is a foreign concept to students. There is no inspiration for creativity. Why would someone put in the effort to come up with a better or different solution when they know that no one's going to give a crap? It's no surprise that senior CSE or ISE students find their syllabus so hard. They're randomly expected to do new and advanced things after their entire thought process behind coding was built on programming habits they developed by memorizing programs that aren't even relevant to today's technology.
An education system like this helps only to churn out manpower to companies which require constant grunt work and pay very little. They'll have no problem letting you go when that work is done and you've displayed no creative prowess to help the company innovate.

No matter how big of a disadvantage you realize this can all be, there have been people who made it out of this system without lasting damage. Quoting a comment on one of the StackOverflow answers above,
"If you want to gain some real-world experience, take on the challenge of getting the University to update its compiler technology. You will be helping all of the students gain a more relevant education, improving the value of the university program, and learning tons about how to persuade people when you have no direct influence, a key part of any professional's life."
In my college, I intend to at least try to bring about some positive change by communicating with the authorities, and on the off chance that it fails, I could always start a club where we teach ourselves all that which today's graduates sorely need.

Tic Tac Toe - Unbeatable Algorithm

This post is part of the "First Few Old Blog Posts" archive.
You could expect a certain lack of coherency/maturity from these posts.

For my Computer Project at school , I had to make a simple Java Program. The rules although simple, were very restricting since my class hadn't learnt as much in programming, The program had to be console based (i.e. no Graphics), I could not use any Library Classes apart from the ones that came along with java.lang and Console Input classes. Also, my class hadn't learnt about inheritance and other OOP stuff so I had to stay clear from those too.

The trouble now was to make a good enough project that fit the criteria.
My classmates had settled on making games such as hangman, crossword, calculators etc, but I had already made most of them before while I was getting into programming, and they didn't have much appeal to me.

In the end , I concluded that the project would have to be small anyway, so I decided to make Tic Tac Toe Singleplayer. I'd already made Tic Tac Toe mutliplayer last year as part of a larger package , so I thought that it would be a nice addition to have this as well.

The 3x3 grid was constructed using a 2 dimensional array.
You had to play against the computer in 3 modes - Easy , Medium and Hard respectively.

Easy mode was simple. I used Math.random() to decide the X and Y co-ordinates of the resulting move.

Medium randomly chose between playing easy or hard for that move.

And hard used an algorithm that was impossible to beat. Of course , tic tac toe isn't such a full blown game , and any person smart enough could play any number of matches and always make a tie. But anyway, here is the code for all 3 modes.

Note: This is a function that simply calculates the position that the computer plays in, in a given circumstance. It takes an integer value (int c) that contains the difficulty value (1,2 or 3 for easy,medium or hard). It also takes a 2 dimensional character array of length 3 and 3 (char[][] u) which contains 'X' (player value) , 'O' (computer value) or '-' (empty value). The function returns an integer array of size 2 which contains the x and y co-ordinates of the computed value.

To see the whole program , click here.

     
    public static int[] compute(int c,char[][] u){
        int ar[]=new int[2];
        if (c==1){
            int x=(int)(Math.random()*3);
            int y=(int)(Math.random()*3);
            if (u[x][y]=='-'){
                ar[0]=x;
                ar[1]=y;
                return ar;
            }
            else{
                return compute(1,u);
            }
        }
        if (c==2){
            return compute(((int)(Math.random()*3)+1),u);
        }
        if (c==3){
            boolean mark=false;
            int x=0,y=0;
            int count=0;
            for (int i=0;i<3;i++){
                for (int j=0;j<3;j++){
                    if (u[i][j]=='-'){
                        count++;
                        u[i][j]='X';
                        if (check(u)==2){
                            mark=true;
                            x=i;
                            y=j;
                        }
                        u[i][j]='-';
                    }
                }
            }
            for (int i=0;i<3;i++){
                for (int j=0;j<3;j++){
                    if (u[i][j]=='-'){
                        u[i][j]='O';
                        if (check(u)==1){
                            mark=true;
                            x=i;
                            y=j;
                        }
                        u[i][j]='-';
                    }
                }
            }
            if ((!mark)&&(predict(u,0,0)>1||predict(u,0,2)>1||predict(u,1,1)>1||predict(u,2,0)>1||predict(u,2,2)>1)){
                for (int i=0;i<3;i++){
                    for (int j=0;j<3;j++){
                        if (u[i][j]=='-'&&((i==0&&j==1)||(i==1&&j==0)||(i==1&&j==2)||(i==2&&j==1))){
                            u[i][j]='O';
                            for (int k=0;k<3;k++){
                                for (int l=0;l<3;l++){
                                    if (u[k][l]=='-'){
                                        u[k][l]='O';
                                        if (check(u)==1){
                                            mark=true;
                                            x=k;
                                            y=l;
                                        }
                                        u[k][l]='-';
                                    }
                                }
                            }
                            u[i][j]='-';
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            if (!mark){
                if (count==9){
                    int ran=(int)(Math.random()*5);
                    switch(ran){
                        case 0 : x=0;
                                 y=0;
                                 break;
                        case 1 : x=1;
                                 y=1;
                                 break;
                        case 2 : x=2;
                                 y=2;
                                 break;
                        case 3 : x=0;
                                 y=2;
                                 break;
                        case 4 : x=2;
                                 y=0;
                                 break;
                    }
                }
                else if (count==8){
                    if (u[1][1]=='-'){
                        x=1;
                        y=1;
                    }
                    else{
                        int ran=(int)(Math.random()*4);
                        switch(ran){
                            case 0 : x=0;
                                     y=0;
                                     break;
                            case 1 : x=2;
                                     y=0;
                                     break;
                            case 2 : x=2;
                                     y=2;
                                     break;
                            case 3 : x=0;
                                     y=2;
                                     break;
                        }
                    }
                }
                else{
                    if (u[0][0]=='-'&&u[2][2]=='O'){
                        x=0;
                        y=0;
                    }
                    else if (u[2][2]=='-'&&u[0][0]=='O'){
                        x=2;
                        y=2;
                    }
                    else if (u[0][2]=='-'&&u[2][0]=='O'){
                        x=0;
                        y=2;
                    }
                    else if (u[2][0]=='-'&&u[0][2]=='O'){
                        x=2;
                        y=0;
                    }
                    else{
                        if (u[0][0]=='-'){
                            x=0;
                            y=0;
                        }
                        else if (u[2][2]=='-'){
                            x=2;
                            y=2;
                        }
                        else if (u[0][2]=='-'){
                            x=0;
                            y=2;
                        }
                        else if (u[2][0]=='-'){
                            x=2;
                            y=0;
                        }
                        else{
                            for (int i=0;i<3;i++){
                                for (int j=0;j<3;j++){
                                    if (u[i][j]=='-'){
                                        x=i;
                                        y=j;
                                    }
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
            if (u[x][y]=='-'){
                ar[0]=x;
                ar[1]=y;
                return ar;
            }
            else{
                return compute(3,u);
            }
        }
        return ar;
    }

Well, I admit that this algorithm isn't the most efficient one out there, but I had functionality in mind, instead of efficiency, so I rolled with a makeshift solution.
But what's more fun is to tell everyone that you couldn't beat my program the next day at the computer lab. They enthusiastically take up the challenge at once, and their faces were worth being looked at when most of them lost to the computer at the second game.

It was great fun.