Third MUF Class Summary

The third MUF class took place on Sunday at the now-usual location. Professor Joshua Farstrike (augmented coyote) had an audience formed of BunnyHugger (devilbunny), Airborn (holographic skunk), Dragoncat (feline dragon), and Claude (LOLcat).

The lesson started with an in-depth explanation of variable scope which, it turns out, can cause serious security issues if not handled properly. Some of the topics touched were calling programs from other programs, and variable initialization. It then moved on to function headers, which turn out to be another way to create local variables, and continued with an overview of libraries, including how to create them, how to register library functions and call them.

Technical difficulties forced this part of the lesson to remain theoretical, as the M1 bits granted for the purposes of the class apparently do not permit creating libraries for the use of others. This prompted Professor Farstrike to assign some unusual homework. Namely, the students were prompted to install and configure their own private MUCK servers, starting from a minimal database and setting up the common MUF programs manually.

The class ended early so everyone could be guided through the delicate procedure; most students did fairly well, considering that not all of them were familiar with the steps involved. The final results remain to be seen.

Other notable events during this lesson: the @register command, useful for anyone, not just MUF programmers, was presented, and Dragoncat showed up with his finished homework from last time, which was not due for another week.

A log of the class is available as usual.