I have missing from the blogosphere for several weeks, and with good reason. My significant other has been hospitalized twice in two weeks for unrelated things. First, it was an asthma attack from allergy shots (previously undiagnosed asthma), and then it was a gall bladder attack. She is now home, sans gall bladder, and we are thinking that everything should be fine for a while. Of course, we thought that before the gall bladder attack... but I digress...
That said, I have been in and out of class, and thus am limited on what I can say about the class.
Week 2 began with a reading assignment: A paper on the Mariner 1 bug, one on the Patriot missile system bug, and a paper on the Ariane 5 bug. Monday was the first of the semesters daily quizes, which featured two questions regarding what the specific bugs were in the Mariner and Ariane projects, and a question on "what is the output of this code?". I had forgetten how much Glenn like to focus on the specific and the strange, from the readings to the coding.
The rest of week 2 was a typical Downing class. Throw some code up on the projector, call on someone from his roster sheet, and ask "What is going on here"? As typical, the student can barely get an answer out before Glenn chimes in with his "Well, clearly this is happening. Wouldn't you agree?" It is a unique and sometimes intimidating teaching methodology. We also began reading Exteme Programming Installed.
Week 3 began with the first project, the Downing ubiqiutous 3n+1 problem, due. Not a difficult problem, but I spent more time trying to get Subversion to work, and trying to determine the correct Python syntax for what I wanted to do. There were also two readings, one on the Extreme Programming methodology and another some guy's take on what to do and not to do when engineering software.
Here's where things went wonky for me. I missed class on Wednesday do to the aforementioned asthma, but was able to make it Friday.
Week 4 began with project #2, the Primes problem, due and another of Downing's favorite readings, All I Really Needed to Know about Pair Programming
I Learned in Kindergarten. Monday's quiz asked questions from a reading not yet assigned, and the lecture was lecture on Python's array-type objects, and how they behave. I missed both the test review on Wednesday and the test on Friday. Thankfully, Glenn was generous enough to allow me to take the test on Monday.
And thus, we are caught up....
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