In our shop we take on a lot of code from other firms and our rule is always "write your code in the style of the author if you can". Keeping it consistent on a per-project basis is a good rule of thumb.

For projects that we develop in house I tend to encourage the Allman style and I've setup our IDEs to perform, with a key combination, automatic formatting. That way, before you commit you hit the key combination and BAM, formatted code. I think someone playing the heavy on where you put your braces or white space should have a beer and chill out; I'd be more concerned with what the code was doing rather than it being presented on a silver platter.

If you don't comment your code you're a savage, though. :D

I seem to keep having this conversation. :D

I often find it difficult to describe my love for KDE. I've used GNOME, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, Xfce and even CDE for a time. KDE will suck on your RAM more than the others will, most likely, but on a modern PC the only time I would need a GUI and all of my RAM for my PC to be responsive is if I were running VMs configured in a cluster on it. KDE is a pleasant environment that allows you, more than any other environment, to configure your workspace precisely to how you want to do business with your PC.

On a typical day on my PC I'm running: Firefox, Konqueror (for google searches, via krunner), Yakuake (always in memory, drop-down console), Eclipse, Kate, Dolphin (often on multiple desktops), Kopete (IM client), Konversation (IRC client), GIMP, OpenOffice/Kword (depending on what I'm doing), Amarok (music rules), VLC, Kontact (groupware software, mostly for KMail), etc., etc.

I have a 3.2Ghz processor and 4GB or RAM which I don't even fully use (32 bit Ubuntu, I suck at making the big leap) and some kind of Nvidia card that plays WoW well (and I run that via Wine with -opengl) that allows me to have crazy desktop effects that run as smoothly as the first time I ran WindowMaker on my P133.

Times are changing, the desktop is on Linux now too. I don't think it will ever be for everybody but Linux has the best UI configuration capability, in my opinion, over any other PC interface I've ever used; here's the kicker, it's because of KDE for me. GNOME has always kind of had ups and downs with respect to philosophy regarding applications and how the UI is laid out for each. All KDE apps, unless the author took the pain to build it piece by piece themselves, are pretty much uniform in presentation and usage. GNOME can't claim that and everything else is pretty much just a window manager.

Robustness is not bad if you feel you actually need it. Stick with what works for you, KDE works for me. Open source is about options, too.

I'm not a US citizen, but I'm pretty certain that Posse Comitatus is violated by such actions on behalf of your government.

If, by reading all of the material and going through all of the exercises you have thus far, you are preparing to write a test... congratulations, you're probably finished learning what you need to know. If you're preparing to get a job, you have some work ahead of you. I've been writing software professionally since 1997 (not as long as some, but long enough to impart *some* knowledge.) The more time you spend trying to solve real problems by writing software, the better you will become at doing just that. Having knowledge of an API, system, class library or a language's syntax will never compare to actually doing something useful with that language.

When you get out of school you'll end up running into languages you've never worked with before, didn't spend any time learning and you will be able to pick up their syntax in a very short period of time (for me, recently, it's within hours.) Learning the gotchas of each language/platform combination can take a very long time. Learning how not to shoot yourself in the foot in those languages can take even longer. If I were you, I would create a project for yourself, define a list of requirements. Then, go through the list of requirements and attach an hourly amount to each one, your estimate of how long you think it will take you to perform those tasks. Then, perform them. Don't necessarily focus on making sure you stay within the time you set for yourself, just focus on providing the best solution per task that you know how.

Your first self-made project might go over the hourly allotment, it may not, but either way you'll be well on your way. The next self-made project you assign yourself should be longer, more complex and involve more features (perhaps additions to the project you assigned yourself the first time.) Practice makes perfect. Also, do your best to try not to be "creative" necessarily, solve the problem, don't try to be a code hero, and you should do fine from there.