Preparing for year 11 SDD? (1 Viewer)

[JDurrant]

Hey.

Okay, I did not do Computers in years 9/10 and am looking at doing SDD and IPT. I have never done any programming before (except HTML), although am very good with computers. Have a few questions:

1. I understand they learnt Visual Basic last year- should I learn this myself or is it not needed?

2. What language is taught in year 11? Is it worth having a look at it now before next year?

3. How much maths is required? I am currently about 8th in the 2nd class (of the Advanced course) and will be doing mathematics next year.

Any help appreciated

-John

 

[sunny]

1. I understand they learnt Visual Basic last year- should I learn this myself or is it not needed?

You can learn it yourself to get ahead when its time to do your projects. That way you're not struggling with learning the language and figuring out how to do your project at the same time.

2. What language is taught in year 11? Is it worth having a look at it now before next year?

The syllabus does not specify any language to be taught - its up to individual schools on what to teach. Most of the time it just happens to be VB because its easy to learn.

3. How much maths is required? I am currently about 8th in the 2nd class (of the Advanced course) and will be doing mathematics next year.

In most cases little to none. (unless you go and write some sort of math related program for your project)

 

[JDurrant]

Thanks for that- Ease my worries a bit

 

[bringbackshred]

Mate, as long as you have a bit of experience with computers and stuff, you'll be fine. I didn't do any computer courses in 9/10 and I'm coming first in my SDD class at the moment (maybe not such a great achievement, considering the people in it, but still good nonetheless).

Anyways, back to studying for my final SDD prelim exam tomorrow....

 

[Starcraftmazter]

Sup.

Okay, I did not do Computers in years 9/10 and am looking at doing SDD and IPT. I have never done any programming before (except HTML), although am very good with computers. Have a few questions:

Let me start off by saying, 9/10 was really basic....and virtually none of the stuff learned in 9/10 applies to yr.11 SDD. The only thing I can think of is visual basic, but there was very little done.

When I started year 11, I didn't remember squat from the visual basic I learned in years 9+10 lol.

Yet I managed to do everything relating to VB quite well.

1. I understand they learnt Visual Basic last year- should I learn this myself or is it not needed?

For SDD, no prior knowledge of anything is required. For IPT, you don't use it.

2. What language is taught in year 11? Is it worth having a look at it now before next year?

At my school, mainly VB, which sucks because I hate nothing more.
We did PHP as well.
For the major project you can choose any language you like (at all).

I love the syntax of C and power of PHP, I hate pseudocode...but thats me.

3. How much maths is required?

None. Really, I don't remember using any maths anywhere. Well maybe some basic maths, like if you take an odd number and divide it by 2, you get a decimal. I hope you know that much lol.

I am currently about 8th in the 2nd class (of the Advanced course) and will be doing mathematics next year.

People say maths is highly involved with software design....I am yet to experience this relationship for myself. And I have been developing complex applications in PHP for almost 2 years now.


The most important thing in IPT is knowing how to use Crappy Microsuck Office.

The most important (really, the thing of sole importance) in SDD is being able to attack some kind of a problem and figure out how to write code to solve it.

If you have this skill or think you can develop it, you will make awesome software.

 

[sunny]

For the major project you can choose any language you like (at all).

This is school specific. The syllabus does not specify any language so its up to the school. Schools usually force the class to use one language to standardise marking.

People say maths is highly involved with software design....I am yet to experience this relationship for myself. And I have been developing complex applications in PHP for almost 2 years now.

"Complex" can be at very different levels, and it depends on what you write. Even though you've been doing "complex" PHP apps for 2 years, you wouldn't learn the math of how a curved line is drawn on the screen until 3rd year university.

 

[Starcraftmazter]

Ahhh indeed.

But I don't like drawing things (I dont like anything to do with graphics really), I make code which works with data 8)

CMS, Support Ticket, Image Hosting are the 3 biggest projects I've done so far.

 

[sunny]

But I don't like drawing things (I dont like anything to do with graphics really), I make code which works with data 8)

In that case, you will still eventually deal with maths when you do things like searching, sorting and data mining like mathmatically proving the efficiency of an algorithm or the runtime of something.

 

[timove]

dude u dnt need much computer knowledge u just learn it as they teach but from the sounds of things u should do pretty well

 

[Starcraftmazter]

dude u dnt need much computer knowledge

Just like you don't need to know anything about anything if you're the President of USA...but it helps 8)

 

[Legham]

I was in the exact same position as you, JDurrant. All i'd done was some HTML, and that was it.. as far as coding went. I'm finding SDD really easy this year, and thats without a teacher! I'm doing the course by correspondence, i've only ever talked to my "teacher" that sends the work to me once, so i've basically taught myself. Year 11 is pathetically easy, for SDD, so you'll have nothing to worry about.