A thought about S199. This involves using a distributed processing tool (climateprediction.net) for the duration of the course – my “general use” PC is an old G4 Mac mini, which doesn’t meet the system requirements for BOINC CPDN, so I’ll have to fire up The Beast: my Windows XP gaming PC. The problem with this is that The Beast generates so much heat (and chews through so much electricity) that it’s almost a climate change factor in its own right. Somehow this doesn’t seem quite right…!

I can’t help but wonder: Why!? If you’re so past caring that you don’t even attempt a question, why bother turning up, as a no-show is the same as a nul-points in the end – and I can’t see the exam paper having been so scary to anyone that they couldn’t attempt anything.

One of those questions that’s destined to remain unanswered, but definitely made me curious…

I hadn’t been at all sure about my exam performance in this one, it being the first “real” exam I’d done since my GCSE’s (1988), but it turns out I needn’t have worried – the exam score was actually better than my OCAS. Go figure. That gets me off to a good start in the quest for a 1st-class honours – 30 points down (excluding the level 1 courses), 270 more to go…

As an interesting aside… I took another look at the M255 question paper this morning, alongside the student performance info. It was like looking at a whole new question paper – I couldn’t remember seeing the questions before, and I certainly can’t remember what I wrote for any of the answers. Not sure if that’s a good thing or bad thing..!

M255 was fun, with the early programming exercises involving all sorts of froggery being pitched just right to ease you into the subject matter without threatening you right off the bat with untold lines of code. They came before the end of the course, of course, but it’s a very well-presented course that’s paced almost perfectly, and the sense of self-satisfaction and achievement you get from getting a block of code to finally work as intended (sometimes after hours of puzzlement and hair-pulling) is hard to beat. You do need a certain way of thinking to do well at programming, I think, and if you don’t have it you’ll struggle – but as an introduction to object-oriented programming and a way of seeing if you have a) the interest, and b) the aptitude, it’s hard to beat.

I have possibly unrealistic hopes of gaining a First for my degree, so a Distinction here would be a good, positive start, and I was fortunate enough that my Continuous Assessment scores for M255 where in the range where that’s a possible result (my employer’s also jumping up and down for good results – they’re funding my degree units) – but I think I’d be happy with a Merit. Just over a week to go to find out…

So.  Twenty “multiple guess” questions, and 4 long-form questions.  Fortunately, the OU seems to follow a pattern with their exam papers – they may change the puzzle or wording, but they seem to stick with testing the same knowledge from year to year, so I had concentrated on those when I was revising – and was hugely pleased to see this year’s paper stuck to the formula.  That made Part B a lot easier than I was expecting – but the problem here is that M255 expects you to write working code under exam conditions, which seems a bit strange.  You’ve got the Java Reference on hand, but it doesn’t cover everything – a “real world” programmer will be able to go dig up references if he can’t remember commands or methods, but under the exam if it’s not in the OU’s Java Reference, your stuffed.  You’ve also got no way of testing or debugging your code as it’s all hand-written – and that creates another set of problems if you have to amend what you’ve already written.  So while the long-form questions weren’t overly difficult as such, it’s hard to see why writing code under exam conditions is deemed necessary & the inability to test your code is a huge disadvantage.

Part A was a little tricker than I had expected. With most questions needing 2 answers from 6 questions, it was usually easy enough to narrow them down to 3 options – after which things started to get a bit vague. I can see myself having lost a few points there.

I went into this with a good enough POCAS score to have visions of a level 1 pass – while the paper was far from a complete disaster, at the moment I think I’d be happy with a level 2. No point worrying about it now, though – results aren’t due until the tail-end of August, so until then it’s on to other things. S194 & T224 await…