FLiFnotes

Ah, my second semester in computer science has finally come to a close. When the Spring semester starts, I’ll no longer be a pre-CS student but a full-fledged CS student. It’s been a very busy semester for me but very rewarding at the same time. I finally feel like I’m at the point where I can comprehend most any topic in CS that anyone cares to throw at me, even though it may still take a little extra time to sink in.

Anyhow, some closing thoughts on the classes that have encompassed me for the past few months:

CS 315: Algorithms and Data Structures (Novak)

Novak’s CS 315 site is one of the best in the department–if for nothing else than having an excellent vocabulary list and so many ways to browse the class notes. Novak wasn’t the most exciting lecturer, but he always made sure we understood what was going on. If I could change one thing about this class, though, I’d like to look at implementations a bit more. He’d tell us that the code already existed, and his focus was on making programming faster and easier for others, but for now I still want to see things very in depth.

CS 310: Computer Organization and Programming (Boral)

In this course, we got to learn the fundamentals. We implemented our own stack and heap using LC-3 and learned how to write machine code. There’s much to be learned from this, but I think the main thing is to cherish the high-level languages we get to use (I still think it’s funny to call C “high-level” though) and to optimize how we use them without having to constantly focus on the small details. Boral was usually an entertaining lecturer, and if it wasn’t for the unpredictability of his tests I’d love to take another course with him.

CS 313K: Logic, Sets, and Functions (Lifschitz)

I took this class ten years ago as Philosophy 313K, so I expected this to be mostly a refresher course, and as such much of it was quite boring. However, I couldn’t miss any lectures because the exams would have questions about topics that weren’t in any of our notes or assignments. The course was mainly focused on mathematical functions and sequences, and I was a bit disappointed that logical quantifiers and connectives weren’t really covered. At least it was a (mostly) easy A for me.

EE 316: Digital Logic Design (Touba)

Between readings, homeworks, and labs, EE 316 is probably the most time-intensive course I’ve taken so far. (The required lab section doesn’t count for any credit hours.) Much of the material looks easy in retrospect, but the pace is so quick that you’re sure to get behind at some point along the way and have a lot of trouble catching up. The verbosity of VHDL is quite irritating, but learning all the tricks with Karnaugh maps was fun and state diagrams seem almost natural now.

M 328K: Introduction to Number Theory (Caputo)

Ah, my last ever pure math course. For being a rather easy course, though, it really made me miss Differential Equations. I mentioned this earlier, and now I’m sure that Moore method isn’t my strong point. I love to research things just to get new ideas even and felt pretty stifled in this class. It looks like what I did learn won’t go to waste, though. I’ve been looking over the supplementary textbook for CS 336 (next semester), and many of the theorems and algorithms I’ve learned are in there.

(Note: I’m still waiting for my official grades to come out, but as I’ve calculated it: for the semester I have A’s in CS 310, CS 313k, and M 328k, and B’s in CS 315 and EE 316.
Update: I got an A in CS 315 and an A- in EE 316. Whoo!)