Master's Thesis - C++

[Alex Edwards]

Hmm... I've made it my top priority to get a Master's and Ph.D in Computer Science and Software Systems... however I'd like to know what a suitable Master's Thesis would be?

I'm thinking about making a book, maybe 6000 pages long, pertaining to nothing but Software ideals and technology.

This might be overkill, but it might also be helpful to others who think a lot like me =P.

Then again, I have seen some Thesis' become used by companies. Such Thesis' required a lot of study and usability factors. I hope that my ideas will have the same effect O_O.

There's no way I'll finish now, but I'd like to be steered in the right direction. I especially want to devote most of the Thesis to C++ and how the language is used to interface with Operating Systems to perform human-readable computer logic.

It'll be some time before I have to do this, but I'd like to plan ahead! =)

Thank you!

-Alex

[Narue]

...

[Alex Edwards]

...

I've never seen you speechless before O_O

>_<

-Alex

[Narue]

It happens every now and then, usually when somebody says something so monumentally stupid that I can't find the right words to express myself. Or in your case, when I can't tell if you're joking or not.

[Alex Edwards]

It happens every now and then, usually when somebody says something so monumentally stupid that I can't find the right words to express myself. Or in your case, when I can't tell if you're joking or not.

Well I am serious! O_O

I thought I'd do some writing on my own and as I learn over time I can refactor and add content.

The editing portion would of course be reviewed by professionals willing to put time into it.

But yeah, I am very serious!!! O_O

-Alex

[Narue]

Well then...best of luck.

[Alex Edwards]

Well then...best of luck.

Thank you! =)

[dmanw100]

I personally would like to read such a book but 6,000 pages is a lot of work for something that may never gain much respect. I like your idea but there are many Master's Theses that never go beyond being made.

[stilllearning]

Writing a book is a good idea, but I'm not sure that writing a book on software engineering is the way to go for a thesis.

Both Master's and Phd theses are much usually more focussed in a certain area of interest. Plus it also depends to some extent on your professor's area of research, and that of your panel who will be reviewing your thesis. You may want to speak with your advisor and figure it out.

[Ancient Dragon]

I guess you don't know how big a 6,000 page book is! I have a copy of "SQL, The Complete Reference", by James Groff & Paul N Weinberg, which has 998 pages and is 2 1/2 inches thick. Your book would be about 15 inches thick! I have never seen such a huge book.

[Alex Edwards]

I guess you don't know how big a 6,000 page book is! I have a copy of "SQL, The Complete Reference", by James Groff & Paul N Weinberg, which has 998 pages and is 2 1/2 inches thick. Your book would be about 15 inches thick! I have never seen such a huge book.

Ok... maybe I should shed some light on my idea, though I did not want to do this before since I didn't want anyone to steal it @_@

Then again, if someone does steal the idea, I suppose it would be quite a feat to do it in anything less than 6000 pages O_O

Anywho...

I plan on making a book that puts all of the pieces of logic and Software together. From imagination to syntax (in C++) and other useful amounts of information O_O

There would be 4 sections to the book.

Section 1) The "Old Testament" which consists of programming from 1940-1985 and ideas that existed between those times.

Section 2) The "New Testament" which consists of programming from 1986-2008 and of course ideas that existed between those times.

Section 3) Combining concepts of the Old and the New.

Section 4) Problem analysis, Imagination and Implementation.

More likely than not, I'll probably dedicate 2000 pages to both the Old and New Testament and 800 pages to the last 2 section, leaving room for solutions to problems that might exist within certain subsections O_O.

[Salem]

6000 pages @ 1 page per day ~= 16.5 years.
Planning anything else afterwards, say the world's longest beard perhaps?

Now if you're doing some proper old-time research (and coming up with genuine new ideas, which is what a PhD ought to be), it might take weeks to come up with a single page of useful material.

But if you're planning on copy/pasting whatever google search results, it's doable.
But it would be the ultimate Write Once Read Never tome IMO.

The index would be so large that it would need it's own index ;)

[Ancient Dragon]

I wouldn't use the terms "Old Testiment" and "New Testiment" because you will immediately get critisizm from the religious people. No point immediately discarding 1/4th the potential readership (and customers).

[Alex Edwards]

6000 pages @ 1 page per day ~= 16.5 years.
Planning anything else afterwards, say the world's longest beard perhaps?

Now if you're doing some proper old-time research (and coming up with genuine new ideas, which is what a PhD ought to be), it might take weeks to come up with a single page of useful material.

But if you're planning on copy/pasting whatever google search results, it's doable.
But it would be the ultimate Write Once Read Never tome IMO.

The index would be so large that it would need it's own index ;)

It wouldn't be copy-pasta! >_<

Everything added will be tested and evaluated. Originality would also be implemented for everything added.

Some of the material might be reference to most people, but I'm hoping to introduce something new after I obtain more experience and find something, like a particular domain, that really needs better support (which would be doable, it would just take some work >_<).

That's partly the reason on why I'd start now instead of later @_@.

-Alex

[Alex Edwards]

I wouldn't use the terms "Old Testiment" and "New Testiment" because you will immediately get critisizm from the religious people. No point immediately discarding 1/4th the potential readership (and customers).

Good point =)

I'm atheist so something like that didn't matter to me, but it is something to think about! XP

-Alex

[Denniz]

That's very ambitious. How long do you think you would take to finish this 6000-page book?

[Alex Edwards]

That's very ambitious. How long do you think you would take to finish this 6000-page book?

Most likely 2 years to get the first few drafts done @_@, hopefully I can edit it within 5 months after that to finish but that's seriously wishful thinking >_<

-Alex

[shrughes]

...

[sidatra79]

I guess you don't know how big a 6,000 page book is! I have a copy of "SQL, The Complete Reference", by James Groff & Paul N Weinberg, which has 998 pages and is 2 1/2 inches thick. Your book would be about 15 inches thick! I have never seen such a huge book.

I think he might meant a virtual book.... sth like e-book :D :D

[Narue]

>Most likely 2 years to get the first few drafts done @_@, hopefully I can edit it
>within 5 months after that to finish but that's seriously wishful thinking >_<
More like complete fantasy. What you're suggesting is akin in principle to Knuth's TAOCP, which has taken the better part of his life, still isn't finished, and I'd estimate that it totals to about 1500 pages presently (including the index in each volume).

[stilllearning]

I never wrote a thesis for my Masters, did more of a set of research papers, but honestly I haven't come across any that are more than a few hundred pages.

On a practical side, you do understand that your advisor/panel will be reviewing your thesis and making corrections to it before you present it ? Do you seriously expect them to read 6000 pages ?

[Salem]

You're like some pharoah, clueless as to just how big the job is, just waking up one day and deciding "I need a pyramid".

More maths, since you seem incapable of grasping something simple like multiplication and division.

5 months = 150 days => 40 pages per day.

Low estimate of a single page = 2000 characters / 300 words.
Low estimate for day (40 pages) = 80,000 characters / 12,000 words.

Bearing in mind that there are only 86,400 seconds in a day, you need to be a hell of a lot quicker than 1 keystroke per second. A pedestrian 20wpm is a solid 10 hour day.

This is sustained average rate, EVERY SINGLE DAY. There will be days when nothing happens, or where you have a rethink (or the party last night was rather good). Which means the burst rate to keep your average is going to have to be off the scale.

A professional copy typist who can manage 100 wpm, and who doesn't have to think about what is being written could do it. But you're neither a professional typist, nor are you simply copying things. 40 pages/day of useful information – not a chance.

IMO, 60 pages is all what you describe is worth. It might make it into the low hundreds perhaps, but many 1000's is hopeless (and pointless).

[Alex Edwards]

I never wrote a thesis for my Masters, did more of a set of research papers, but honestly I haven't come across any that are more than a few hundred pages.

On a practical side, you do understand that your advisor/panel will be reviewing your thesis and making corrections to it before you present it ? Do you seriously expect them to read 6000 pages ?

>Most likely 2 years to get the first few drafts done @_@, hopefully I can edit it
>within 5 months after that to finish but that's seriously wishful thinking >_<
More like complete fantasy. What you're suggesting is akin in principle to Knuth's TAOCP, which has taken the better part of his life, still isn't finished, and I'd estimate that it totals to about 1500 pages presently (including the index in each volume).

You're like some pharoah, clueless as to just how big the job is, just waking up one day and deciding "I need a pyramid".

More maths, since you seem incapable of grasping something simple like multiplication and division.

5 months = 150 days => 40 pages per day.

Low estimate of a single page = 2000 characters / 300 words.
Low estimate for day (40 pages) = 80,000 characters / 12,000 words.

Bearing in mind that there are only 86,400 seconds in a day, you need to be a hell of a lot quicker than 1 keystroke per second. A pedestrian 20wpm is a solid 10 hour day.

This is sustained average rate, EVERY SINGLE DAY. There will be days when nothing happens, or where you have a rethink (or the party last night was rather good). Which means the burst rate to keep your average is going to have to be off the scale.

A professional copy typist who can manage 100 wpm, and who doesn't have to think about what is being written could do it. But you're neither a professional typist, nor are you simply copying things. 40 pages/day of useful information – not a chance.

IMO, 60 pages is all what you describe is worth. It might make it into the low hundreds perhaps, but many 1000's is hopeless (and pointless)

@Stilllearning - If they are aware that it will be reviewed by professionals first, would it yield a better chance of being approved? Then again considering this statement alone, the book will probably be shorter than originally planned XD

@Narue - Ok!!! Maybe 6000 pages is overkill @_@, but I still want to make a book with a fair amount of content! =)

@Salem - I planned on writing everything out then type it out later. I've managed to produce 2000-3000 pages of stories (which are really 1000-1500 pages, just front and back) and scripts on College-ruled paper alone, which usually expand to be 4000-5000 pages total in word documents. Of course the content is questionable, but the time it took me to produce that many pages wasn't long at all. It would take maybe 2 weeks for the initial writing when I didn't have much to do, but realistically with my current schedule it would probably take 14 weeks to accomplish the same feat these days. That's only when I get to the writing - before that would be a thorough analysis on how I want everything to be organized, content to be added and an overall aim for the book. Suffice to say, I didn't need to do the math because I already knew what I was capable of doing based on previous experiences, though I do appreciate your concern with the workload I'd have to tackle in order to accomplish my ideas =). Also I do plan on decreasing the amount of pages to something more reasonable, though if it gets to the point where more needs to be added I will definitely add more #_#

Yes I understand it's a big job, but that's partly the reason I want to start early... though there's another more important reason that I don't wish to openly speak of.

[Narue]

>Maybe 6000 pages is overkill @_@
Ya think?

>but I still want to make a book with a fair amount of content! =)
Figure out what you want to say, then say it. If you focus on the quantity of content, you'll end up with lots of filler that nobody cares about. What you really want to do, what good technical authors do, is take a mass of information and describe it in such a way as to make it accessible without losing the important parts.

My goal in writing tutorials is to save you the time and effort in searching all over creation for information by collecting it in one place, and also to save you the time and effort in understanding it by describing it in a clear, concise, and consistent manner[1]. That should be your goal as well, from what I can tell by your description of the project.

[1] I can't say I've succeeded, but that's my goal.

[stilllearning]

Well I am not sure how things would work, if you had parts of it pre-approved by professionals. From what I know, and what I've seen my classmates do, pretty much all of their theses had to be read, corrections made and approved before they could present it. And in cases there were corrections to be made even after ! I would strongly suggest, discussing this with your research adviser before you get into it. If you don't have one yet, then find one who will be interested in something like what you are proposing. Its sounds like a lot of work, and its better that you get things cleared up before you start putting all this work into it.

[grumpier]

[1] I can't say I've succeeded, but that's my goal.

All good authors start with that goal. Very few fully achieve it, unless they simply finish off work started by someone else. The journey towards the goal, and products produced along the way, are actually what's important in the long run.

[gotyoucpp]

hello Alex Edwards, just want to nkow if you have completed your thesis book, can you please post the details here?

[jwenting]

he can't answer right now, all his fingers have been reduced to bloody stumps by all the typing he's done over the last 3 years and he's still only 20% done with his 6000 page work :)

[wanguard]

A 6000 page book will be almost 18 inches. I would recommend a thesis on a select area of interest of yours. I am not out of High School so you can ignore me and take heed of more experienced posters here

[Ancient Dragon]

The longest book in the world only has 1400 pages. Instead of one 6,000 page book maybe he should write 20 300-page books.