How to ask the right questions

Question

Howdy, all. I have some questions pertaining to programming in a more general sense.
Since you've all heard the new person background story dozens of times, I'll skip over most of that part. : )
One important detail I will bring up, though, is that I will graduate soon with a bachelor's degree in computer science, and I am distressed that I seem to have large gaps in my knowledge regarding current development techniques. I wanted to learn how to program, which what led me to my current university's school of engineering. I also would like to stick with my Macintosh, since that's what I'm comfortable working on. However, when I sit down to practice own my own, I struggle with anything beyond a console application. So I guess my first question would be, am I expecting the wrong kind of skills from my degree? Is this something I will simply pick up when I go to my first job? Is this something otherwise so simple that I should be able to pick it up on my own-but can't for some reason? I've completed all my core software classes, and have only to take non-software related required courses or general electives.
For a more specific example, I've just recently learned more or less what a framework is, and what it is used for, though not from any of my classes. Having completed a course in .NET Web Application design this past fall semester, one would imagine that I would have picked up that detail along the way, but for some reason the professor never addressed it. In light of that, it's possible that I know even more than I think I know, but I don't yet have a label for it, or realize that it's important.
This leads to another dilemma. I don't know what kinds of questions I need to ask of my professors, because I don't really know what I don't know. I remember going into several professors' offices to bring up my general programming difficulties. They usually gaped in amazement when I said that I was a senior and I didn't know how to make a hello world application. As it turns out, the correct thing I should have said was "I don't quite understand how a development environment creates a hello world application, aside from as a console application" which is a somewhat different topic. I need to get to a point where I am able to ask a professor directly. "I need to know more about <such and such topic>." Slowly I am getting there. I would appreciate any advice anyone has to give.
Thanks!
Robert

Answer 1

Howdy. Sorry it took so long to get back to the forums. Trying to get my last semester in order and it's been a little crazy.
To answer the question of what I've taken already, the core computer science program basics at my school include introduction to programming concepts in Java as an "art of solving problems," programming fundamentals in C, discrete math, basic data structures, object oriented design in C++, basic analysis of algorithms and their complexities, computer organizations and processor architectures, and fundamentals of operating systems. I've also taken several math-oriented electives, such as automata theory and formal languages, and computational geometry, as well as a few courses more focused on specific applications such as computer animation and .NET programming.
I have looked at the various manuals and tutorials online, however I seem to suffer from a lack of a true starting point as someone who is completely new to non-console applications as opposed to someone who is just new to the Mac style of programming. I was looking at Quick Tour of XCode, but even that is giving me a fit. I can't seem to find a version of the guide for XCode 2.5, which I'm stuck with at the moment. I think that the suggestion is correct, that I need a little more focus to gain the insight I'm looking for. I was stuck as early as the Hello World application. The 2.0 method of creating the application seems completely alien to the setup of XCode 2.5, and I can't quite relate to the 3.0 version either.
I can't imagine that creating such an application is beyond what I have currently installed, and it's probably an issue of my competence in working with a cocoa framework that's keeping me from tweaking the example to work correctly. Any analogy to something I'm more familiar with doesn't seem to apply here.
Take, for example, in a web page and using Javascript. I could have a web page with a script that is executed on page load that simply writes "Hello World!" into the <body> section of the page. Alternatively, I could have a text box and a button. When the button is clicked, it could execute a script that creates a reference to the text box by searching the elements of the page for the unique ID I have assigned, then using that reference, modify the text property of the text box. However, the 2.0 guide's design seems to be using a more archaic style of programming in that it instantiates a window object of its own volition and invokes a drawing function to display something inside it--this was to my understanding the style of programming that frameworks were engineered to replace. The 3.0 guide's instructions seem a little closer, but the interface builder doesn't seem to let me assign any IDs to the text box, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to reference it to modify its properties.
Thanks again for everyone's advice on this!
Robert