Just to give the heads up: finals are approaching, this means that my time is going to become more and more limited in the next few weeks. I highly recommend anyone who needs me for something start leaning a little bit now and make sure it’s on my radar… or you may be waiting on me.
This concludes this public service announcement.
Just looked at my calendar. In 5 weeks finals are upon me. That means in 6 weeks. Summer is here!
Oh yea, Happy Easter.
Paul Graham, whose writing I greatly admire wrote an excellent bit on College recently. Being a college student myself, I found this to be by far the most interesting thing he’s ever written (and there’s quite a bit of competition there). A few things he wrote stick out in my mind:
The way to be good at programming is to work (a) a lot (b) on hard problems. And the way to make yourself work on hard problems is to work on some very engaging project.
Couldn’t agree more, and considering that I’m a geek, this one comes rather naturally. I didn’t need to make an effort to accomplish this one, it just happened for me. I guess that’s a good thing.
In fact, the amount of math you need as a CS major is a lot less than most university departments like to admit. I don’t think you need much more than high school math plus a few concepts from the theory of computation. (You have to know what an n^2 algorithm is if you want to avoid writing them.) Unless you’re planning to write math applications, of course. Robotics, for example, is all math.
Finally someone with credibility admits this one. One of the reasons I avoided the CS major was simply my dislike of math (and more importantly the dislike it has for me). It surprises people that I know how to program without a CS degree. It surprises people even more to know that I royally stink at math (just ask any former math teacher/professor I’ve had). Nobody believes that I can code because of this… well go figure I can.
The worthwhile departments, in my opinion, are math, the hard sciences, engineering, history (especially economic and social history, and the history of science), architecture, and the classics. A survey course in art history may be worthwhile. Modern literature is important, but the way to learn about it is just to read. I don’t know enough about music to say.
I agree with the one omission of a Business degree. It goes very well with a CS degree should you pursue one. Simply for the reason that just about whatever you do with your CS degree will take advantage (if not require) it. Take for example a corporate IT department. To advance, you’ll need a business background. A small company? You can bet a business degree will prove critical to your success. Startup? Hello, that is a business. Having a product is 10% of a successful company. The other 90% of it is a good business to support, continue, sell, market, manage that product. Take a look at the dot com bubble to see why Business ranks. To his credit he does mention economic history, which is also important. No matter what you’ll be involved in business if you want to succeed. Either with a startup, or with a corporation, understanding the business implications of decisions you make are essential to how you’ll be valued as an asset.
Of slightly less interest (at least right now) is the topic of Grad school, which I agree with. Though with a business degree, it has more merit than it likely will with a CS degree.
Overall a great (and recommended) read.
Well, got up, checked my email, hit the shower, had breakfast, and went to class:
World Lit 2/24 Canceled: Enjoy the Snow
Well thanks for the Email! Oh well…. on my way back I snapped a few pictures of the snow (from the Camera Phone).
Edit: 2:30 pics posted. Last one is a cheap rip off of Christo’s “The Gates”. Ok, it’s just some construction barrier.
Some things upcoming this week:
There’s more than that, but those are the ones that come to mind.
Oh yea, this page is now XHTML Strict. And will hopefully be that way 99% of the time.
Well, it’s snowing (perhaps some pictures tomorrow if I remember, and my cell phone’s battery lasts). Anyway tonight and tomorrow I’ve got a fair amount of reading. World Lit, International Business, and Operations Management await. Yea.
I’m gearing up to post more pics. No fancy digital camera. But I do have a camera phone (as you can see above). WordPress is now semi-integrated with Gallery, so it’s easier for me to do (and maintain).
The picture here represents how school is treating me lately, and the reason I’m so behind on stuff I’ve been wanting to do. As you can see, I’m represented in the picture, so is school, and you, my faithful reader are also shown, merely watching on as school treats me to some “learning”.
School is a pain in the butt.
Enough here, move along…
it will be over soon enough, and I can get some sleep.
The semester has to end eventually.
Picture from AFP via Yahoo
Edit: And for some reason IE is messing up the rendering of this post. No other browsers seem to be effected. I’m not suprised.
I’m going to be rather involved with school, so I’m not sure I’ll be posting to much, or accomplishing to much in the next week or two. Apparently I have Thursday off, so that should make a 4 day weekend, and make my life much easier. So hopefully I can gain the upper hand by Thursday and put myself in a more relaxing situation…. we can hope right?
Or perhaps Monday and Wednesday I’ll have really productive afternoons and get lots of work done with minimal effort…. that would be great.
I will of course be online for the Firefox launch as much as I can 😀 I’ve got a few classes, but I’ll be checking in throughout the day to see what the estimated download count is… and to share in some of the IRC fun that will follow.
I’ve got 3 ongoing projects at the moment consuming my time. Yes they are rather intensive projects….
not to mention I have school 😉
When they break, it will be big.
So this blog will be somewhat more quiet over the next few weeks.
I’ve been keeping rather busy these past few weeks: