Sorry for the recent silence. I’ve had a rash of smaller tests at school, and now I’m prep’ing for finals. I took two classes this semester. Computer Science 102 (basically, a class in how to program in C++), and College Algebra (er, that’s essentially Algebra II). I have an “A” in both classes right now, but as with most college courses, it all rides on the final exam.
My Comp. Sci. class has actually overlapped ever so slightly with my job. If nothing else, it enables me to understand how to *read* more code, which can, in some instances, help to troubleshoot applications that I have to run. It also has given me a little more courage than is likely healthy at this point. I recently rewrote some simple scripted tools I made in C, which is really overkill (a 40-line script written in bash or perl is likely a couple hundred lines of C).
As for my College Algebra class, it has, if nothing else, extinguished some of my anxiety toward math in general. The first thing I ever failed was Algebra I, in my freshman year of high school. I then passed geometry, and went on to fail Algebra II… twice. This class covered all of that material and then some, and with an eye toward moving on to Calculus, which I’m now looking forward to (it feels weird to even write that).
One thing I’ll say about all this math, though, is that I feel bad for all the other people in the class who have never taken even Comp. Sci. 101. I think math at this level maps *directly* to concepts that I feel are much more readily learned in the context of computers, which have a readily apparent purpose. Function manipulation is a perfect example. f(g(x)) didn’t look even a little bit odd to me, because it is a very, very, very basic, fundamental concept that you learn in the first 2 or 3 chapters of any intro to programming book. I asked my professor if there was any reason for me not to make that mapping, and he said “no, I do the same exact thing”. My math professor has some background in computing as well. He’s also left-handed and has glasses like mine (for lazy eye, like me).
Well, that’s all the news for now. Wish me luck!
later.