Clarification required - U3O2 dotpoint

[silverpixeli]

"A programming language as a method for developing solutions that meet specific needs"

I know The study design for SD is generally regarded as ambiguous, but I have NO IDEA what this one is referring to.
Janson's textbook says that this is covered in chapter 6, where I find information on the following:
the structure of programming languages,
the 5 different generations of programming languages,
the difference between languages that are compiled and interpreted
I have no problems studying this stuff, it's actually interesting in my opinion and I'd like to know more about these generations, but am I meeting the required key knowledge for this part? I just have no idea what the course wants from me sometimes.

Semi-related, am I just not looking hard enough or are there significantly less past/practice exams available for SD compared to other subjects?
It's obviously a less popular subject so there are less practice exams professionally made, but there also aren't many VCAA exams that relate to the current study design. I haven't looked at the past study design, is it possible to use pre-2011 papers as a source of practice questions or is the course too different now?

Any help is appreciated, thanks

[Kanon]

Semi-related, am I just not looking hard enough or are there significantly less past/practice exams available for SD compared to other subjects?
It's obviously a less popular subject so there are less practice exams professionally made, but there also aren't many VCAA exams that relate to the current study design. I haven't looked at the past study design, is it possible to use pre-2011 papers as a source of practice questions or is the course too different now?

There's a small bunch of companies that do past exam papers, but it's not enough to spam ): Because of the recent study design, not all questions pre-2011 are relevant and the answers can be a bit shady (i'm pretty sure their PSM model having like 7 stages opposed to our 4?) but what you should look into is Swinburne runs a Software Dev revision lecture towards the end of the year. For ITA last year they provided us with a list of questions from the pre-2011 VCAA exam papers that could still be answered today, so maybe see if anyone in the class above you had that sheet for SD or not.

Sorry I can't help you out on the other point ): It's been wayyy too long since I've studied any SD stuff.

[silverpixeli]

Thanks for the reply, I'd heard about the Swinburne lectures but forgotten, I'll definitely look into that. Unfortunately, my school didn't have enough students to run SD last year, so no luck there.

[Kanon]

I found my old e-mails and they dont seem to have taken down the resources. I'll PM it to you.

[Lasercookie]

Pre-2011 VCAA exams and assessor reports are incredibly useful. Mark Kelly's website also lists what questions are relevant and not in his post-mortems too (I think for VCAA 2008 to 2010 from memory). You get a good idea of what's not on the study design anyway, and it does let you realise a bit more about what the current study design's focus is too. Spamming a lot of exams wouldn't really help you that much anyway. Once you know the course well, the big part is picking apart and refining your answers.

a programming language as a method for developing solutions that meet specific needs

The study design does define content for the sacs and for the exams, so it does include dead obvious things. You could interpret this dot point to be telling you that you need to use a programming language in ITSD and that you should learn how to use it so you can do stuff. As opposed to looking at programming languages from a purely theoretical perspective.

You can look at most study design dot points in parts, and ask "what is a programming language" and "what are specific needs". So the stuff you listed is really just fleshing out what a 'programming language' is.

The second bit states "developing solutions that meet specific needs", which is a pretty major concept in SD (you make stuff to do get something done basically). You could go study more about 'solutions' and 'specific needs' but it's kinda self-explanatory and not all that deep though. Specific needs of users comes up somewhere else in the course too, most likely in the dot point to do with designing user interfaces.

With how deep you should go, well it's not that well defined in the study design, and realistically this kind of dot point wouldn't really have a specific exam question written about it, since it's just a general concept. If they specifically wanted you to learn about programming language generations and then be able to answer exam questions about, then it'd be defined clearly - just like the 'processing features of programming languages' is clearly defined in the next dot point.

But you can't deny that it's worth knowing about what compiled/interpreted etc. means, since it does clarify a bit more about what programming languages actually are. The way I decided to approach it was mostly I just read into dot points until the content I'm reading about gets way too technical/obviously not Year 12 level stuff or until I lost interest in reading about that particular concept. If I didn't know what the course wanted from me, I just took that as a reason to go and read/think/discuss more.

I might as well link something from VCEIT, but I think this page does show one way of breaking apart these ambiguous dot points http://www.vceit.com/p/format-structure-of-io.htm

[silverpixeli]

I hadn't actually considered the idea that these dot points could be practical rather than a list of things to study, but it certainly makes more sense that way. I have noticed that the dot points tend to overlap in certain areas. There was one on 'needs of users' only a few dot points before this one, and things like random and serial files keep coming up in passing, and there's a later dot point specifically on those somewhere in unit 4 I think.

Thanks for the new perspective!

[no steez]

I found my old e-mails and they dont seem to have taken down the resources. I'll PM it to you.

Could I also grab a copy of anything? I'm trying to collect exams and resources.
Cheers