10 years

I know you have to finish your degree within 10 years but what happens if you don't? Do you have to redo some subjects?

You have to write out 100 times on the blackboard
"I will stop arsing about on osprey and concentrate on my studies instead"

...

Being yellow too can't hurt, I suppose

Hi Tracey

I think if you only have 1 year left they will let you finish your degree as is. I know after 10 years you have to ask for permission to continue your degree. The problem with the IT degree is that so many course have changed that they may tell you you need to do some other extra modules. The best is to complete it in under 10 years but if you think you will not make it, then email the admin section for info.

Celene

From next year you only get 8 years to finish a 3 year degree.

but that should be for the new registrations. I think old registrations still have 10 years. but best is to get the right answer straight from the admin section

MotaBoy Wrote:
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> From next year you only get 8 years to finish a 3
> year degree.


If registered for BSc before 2009, still 10 years. I did ask.

Thanks guys, I think I will email admin.

I've just worked it out quickly and I think I can still finish within 10 years.

To change the subject, I want to do two modules next year - fairly easy ones, nothing too difficult.

I have a choice between:
COS211X
COS2144
COS2213
COS201V
MAT112P

Which two should I do?

I have heard that cos214 is relatively easy - if that is still the java one

what I did for cos211 was c++ and I struggled - but that was the first time I had seen c++ and a lot of OO stuff - previously I had only known pascal

cos201 is interesting. I thought it was easy but just scraped through the exam.

I didn't do maths 1 subjects at unisa so don't know what mat112 involves.

cos221 - theory is a yawn. but you need to learn assembly language. maybe not quite on the list of easy subjects to do

Why only two? :/ Those subjects are all childs play.

--
"Knowledge has much better uses than self-pity and superiority"

just cause you found them childs play does not mean that everyone will. Tracey also has other commitments which do not give her enough time to do more than 2, plus she has only recently started a new job.

Did MAT112P in 2006. It takes you from the theory behind differentiation (limits & continuity), the applications of differentiation, and then integration. No calculator in exam, but they do provide some of the formulas. If you plan to do it I found the following online material to be of better help than the UNISA supplied material.

http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/terms.aspx

Did COS201V this year, if you're going to do it, try http://www.jflap.org/ for a great tool. Took me long to get to grips with COS201V

Did COS211 and COS214 this year. I found them valuable to combine in the same year, their pace is similar. COS214 (java) steers down the road of design patterns and COS211 is about abstract data types (link lists, sorting, searching) computational complexity, and ends in graph theory…

Tracy, consider doing 3 - Mat112 is a semester subject, so you can finish that in June. Then you have enough time for 2 COS subjects in November.
COS211X = C++ & OO & search & sorting stuff - was also my first exposure to C++. But you've done the 1st year C++ course, so you just need to learn the search & sorting stuff
COS2144 = Java - you should find that easy enough to do
COS2213 = NASM - you really need to get to know how to code in NASM and they don't give a lot of examples - but I can give you old tut's with examples.
COS201V = FOL - it's easier to understand & follow than Cos101 - a sort of "math"

Quote

just cause you found them childs play does not mean that everyone will. Tracey also has other commitments which do not give her enough time to do more than 2, plus she has only recently started a new job.

All the more reason to do more then two.

Her job is only going to get MORE demanding as time goes on.
If she can only manage 2 of these subjects now then by the time she gets to third year she will have to do one a year as COS340 for example(Maybe a bit extreme but there are other hard third year modules as well) is worth about 20 of any of the second year subjects in time and effort required.

Doing so few a year when things are still relatively easy is a recipe for disaster.
If you find yourself worrying about what happens when you hit the 10 year limit this should set off alarm bells in your head that you are doing something wrong.

As Reanie mentioned one of these is even a semester module.

If she really can only take 2 modules I would recommend the two programming ones as they are probably the most beneficial and hardest to fail.

--
"Knowledge has much better uses than self-pity and superiority"

cos 201 isn't FOL. That's cos 261

Sorry - Rick is right.
Cos201 = a funny way to write a's & b's and "flow-charts"/graphs with a's & b's and calling it a language. Actually sort-of fun - if you don't take 2 years to learn your a's & b's...

Thanks guys. I've tried to do MAT112 and COS201 previously and failed both. I'm learning c#.Net for work so maybe the C++ and Java modules would be the best.

I'm only doing 2 this year because that's all I can cope with currently because of health reasons. If I'm doing better during the year, I'll do MAT112 in the second semester.

Plz talk to me about whats hard in mat112p

MAT112P is not that hard, but you have to work hard on it to understand it. I didn't work on it as much as I should have.

celene Wrote:
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> just cause you found them childs play does not
> mean that everyone will.

as much as i don't like to support a statement like the one malcolm made (for the reason you mentioned), if someone is going to pass the 3rd year subjects then only two of those subjects in a whole year really will be child's play in comparison to what's to come.

to put it differently, if it's going to take 1 year to reliably pass 2x second year courses...

Although I ended up doing well in the exam I found COS211X very difficult and I had to put in a lot of time and work over the entire year before the "penny dropped" around October.

Afterwards I wondered why since by then it seemed so logical, but I do remember many months of stress beforehand. I don't think one should underestimate it, especially for those of us who don't program every day, and don't have workmates around us to ask. A simple thing can take many hours when you are working all alone on it with just a book and the internet.

Tracey - the C# exposure won't really help you with the programming modules.
COS211 - probably my most rewarding module so far, but is really quite a bit of work. Given your past apprehension towards C++ - you'd really have to put the hours in here. If you are not C++ proficient - there really is quite a big jump from COS111 + COS112 and this module.
COS214 - The java module, although there really isn't much coding in the exam (despite the amount of coding in the assignments). It's more about OO + design concepts, with a little (not much) UML chucked in. I remember this being a very poorly supported module. I did the first 2 assignments by the end of February, and then did not touch the subject matter until 2 days before the exam. Fortunately I got some pointers on what to concentrate on from a few mates.
Neither of these modules are over the top difficult, but you do have to put the time in, and the 2 modules compliment each other quite well.
So, if you are limited to taking 2 - these would be the 2 modules I'd suggest.

Thanks Andre. I've decided to do both of those you suggest and Assembly. I know that one requires alot of work.

I really didn't do too much work for the assembler module (COS221). I skipped all the theory stuff and spent a couple of days on the assembler code. That probably explains why I only scored 65% for this module - but hey, a pass is a pass.
All the best.

Thanks.
Btw C# seems pretty similar to C++ so why will it not help?

they are similar but you will be tested on the nuances that are different. Its more difficult in c++

C# is a lot friendlier than working soley with C++ template classes - which is basically all that you work with in COS211 - oh, and the whole working with pointers thing.

all the crazy things you can do with pointers are probably not a good idea for general (non-performance oriented) software development, besides this there is only the syntactic difference between references and pointers...

actually i rarely use pointers, mostly for output arguments from function calls (the inputs being const references).

c# is actually more similar to java than what it is to c++ - my opinion anyhow