Weeks 5 and 6

Yes, I have again fallen behind with this blog. Emily was back in the hospital, this time with issues from her surgery and the drug cocktail that she has been on since November. We have now gone a full week without a return visit, so I think we are done with that (I hope).

Week 5 began the new reading assignment: Database Design with UML and SQL by Tom Jewett. This anything but an entertaining read. Rather, it is a very dry explanation about databases and their mechanics. I miss Extreme Programming.

I took the test on Monday. I was completely unprepared, but was willing to accept the consequences as I just wanted to be caught up. The test was surprisingly reasonable, and although I didn't understand the syntax being used in the problems, Glenn included a page of output that allowed me to reverse-engineer what was happening. For being so unprepared, I did pretty well.

In class, Glenn explained the next assignment (Australian Voting), and then spent the week covering more of the more "interesting" aspects of the Python language. He had planned a discussion on Classes within Python for an upcoming week, but I was able to convince him to cover it early. This lecture was especially useful and his variation on the Australian Voting problem was best solved using an object-oriented approach.

Week 6 began with the completion of Australian Voting. I paired with David Garcia on this project, and he was an excellent partner. Not only was he an assett on the actual project, but he was extremely accomodating with my having to balance things against Emily being in the hospital.

The readings for the week were from the Database Design book, and a paper on Gender Issues in Computer Science. The paper was truly a boring read, and I'm somewhat stunned that someone spent the time to research the topic as the results of the paper seem obvious to me.

As we are now 1/3 through the semester, some thoughts on the class....

We have yet to have a lecture on anything relating to actual engineering. No discussions on the methodologies, techniques for creating good documentation, anything... All information on the subject has come from the readings alone. I can appreciate the trial-by-fire approach to doing things, but I was hoping to be lead a little more... That is why I am here...

While I find the lectures on Python interesting, and appreciate Glenn's love of the strange aspects of programming languages, the syntax that he shows us contradicts the lessons from my previous classes, and from the Extreme Programming book. That is, to write code that is easily readable, and to avoid clever syntactic implementations when something clearer might be available.