Relevant GitHub code repositories:
SICP_1.32
SICP_1.33-1.34
SICP_1.40
SICP_1.41-1.46
SICP_2.01
SICP_2.02
ASJava_3.01-3.09
DemocratKarel.java
First work: I've done every exercise in the first chapter of SICP, a few in the second, I'm finishing the last exercises in the 4th chapter of Art and Science of Java, I finished lecture 2B of SICP, I am up to lecture 8 of CS61A Spring 2011, lecture 7 of CS106A. Today is Christmas, Day 25. GitHub repositories will be posted. OK.
I am not going to do every single exercise in SICP. That is crazy. I spent 4 hours yesterday trying to build a midpoint calculator for line segments out of constructors and selectors. Half of you reading will think that's baby stuff, the other half black-magic. I have to remember I have a timeline and I'm not doing anyone any favors by spending 95% of my energy trying to squeeze out the last 5% of understanding of CS theory - forget the 80-20 rule.
Two things that really made me think it's time to shift gears; I finally found the homework and problem sets for the Berkeley CS61A course: [here]. In fact it's a guys GitHub where he laid everything out. Thank you very much kind sir. Looking through the assignments I noticed.. UC Berkeley's famous EECS department is not making its students do every exercise in the book (maybe because they're not crazy). In fact, it's just a handful from each chapter. Well this was a welcome shock to me. The second thing is I took a look at the posting dates on that BilltheLizard guy's blog. I've been using his posts to help get me through when I'm stuck. His first post is in 2009. His last post, which is only 2/3 the way through the 2nd chapter, is in 2013. I'm a fucking idiot. But there are some things it's good to be wrong on, and answering diminishing returns with stubbornness is one of them.
So with that said, my work in the SICP book is going to be limited to the Berkeley homeworks + whatever I feel like doing. This should free up enough time for me to work on Electronic Circuits, Calculus, and maybe cure cancer.
On another note I had to get creative for a CS106A assignment. I'm not at Stanford so I don't have the little 'world' they want you to write the program for. So I went to YouTube, found a guy who explained how to use the editor, then I made a world that matched what was in the handout, did the programming assignment and it worked. Yay. Here's the handout: https://see.stanford.edu/materials/icspmcs106a/10-section-handout-1.pdf
I also cleared up the whole mess with Seton Hall, and now my transcripts are ordered for Stanford. It's a good thing they're lenient with extra materials, and it's completely understandable that, while they'll review an application without official transcripts, they will only make a final decision once they've got them. Anyway, even though the timing is off with the holiday season, they'll get there and worry on that front is over.
I decided on a final project for myself. A way of proving to myself that I've learned anything and moreso that I can actually do things. I want to do things with aerospace and technology... so.. okay simple. Build a drone. If I can put together pieces of metal and silicon and literally breathe life into the damn thing, then I don't need any more proof of what can be done.
The drone project also grounds my CS study, and gives a very real and immediate purpose to studying EE. It actually ties in a lot of things, but anyway.
So I'll be ramping up towards it. It's going to be some sort of arduino-controlled quadcopter. It's going to be fun putting together the mini-projects before hand where I teach myself the little skills I'll need to tie together later. Hey look, a crash course in Systems Engineering. So that's that.
I also haphazardly added another course to the work I'm doing. Since I cut out Codecademy as my lab (it's really on such a simple level that if I do it, I shouldn't really bother to count it) I have an extra slot. MIT OCW has this cool Intro to EECS course. I won't have access to the hands-on labs they'll do (but to be fair, I'm more than making up for that later so no complaints), but MIT put all their reading assignments online. I'm watching the lectures and doing the readings now.
I find it important because they emphasize getting different systems to work together and understanding that from its parts and as a whole. That was really the catch for me. That's about it for now. back to work, and happy holidays.
No comments:
Post a Comment