A few nights ago I helped a friend, Matt Cheah, with his computer science homework. He is taking the courses I took last year so it's all stuff I've seen before. It feels good to be genuinely helpful.
I think one of the reasons I've lost steam this quarter is because of my computer science course. It's called 'introduction to software engineering', which sounds cool and interesting, but after 6 weeks of the course I believe I can safely say it would more accurately be labeled 'intro to planning stuff'. We are learning how, big projects require management, they never get completed on time and within budget. We are learning strategies for minimizing how late and how over budget a large project is going to be. It is frustrating because this is the sort of theory class that simply gets shattered and thrown out once it meets reality. Or it was one of those classes, then the people who made the class realized it was that way and decided to begin every 'fact' we are suppose to be learning with "In some situations..."
I guess what I am getting at is it feels like a waste of time. I cannot apply the same excuse to my two math classes, though. I know that what I am learning in calc and linear algebra is going to be useful in what I hope to do with my life. A fellow of the game design club specifically described the 'Advanced Computer Graphics' course as "a whole lot of matrix multiplication". The calc midterm was ruined by time, I've never been fast at anything so that doesn't bother me too much. My problem with linear algebra is a matter of terminology, I think. There are a lot of different words that stand for a lot of (relatively simple) things about matrices. Unfortunately I have not heard any of these terms before so I was overwhelmed.
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