Learning to Develop Software Progress

I have made some pretty good progress in several areas of learning how to do this software development thing.

Discrete Math Continuing to work through Discrete Maths text book. I am almost finished with Chapter 5: Sequences. Turns out I really like summations. We have gotten to defining sequences recursively, which would have been good background to have in Principles of Computing. Connecting the dots in this way makes me glad I am taking the time to do this.

Work Tasks I have done two coding pieces recently at the J-O-B. I wrote a visualizer in Ruby that uses base class inheritance to organize our ontology, rather than the current organization by domains, which are just general areas of knowledge. Using domains like 'sports', 'cricket', 'engineering', and 'physics' is a pretty unintuitive means to browse a hierarchy. There is no consistent level, and knowing one has to look in the 'time' domain for the broadest concept of 'event' in our ontology is non-obvious, particularly when there is an 'event' domain!! It was really good to see how flat our hierarchy is and identify where we can add in some levels to make a more cohesive and browsable ontology.

I also started learning the Visual Studio IDE and C# language. I have written several small methods to help with a data on-boarding task I currently have. It is a nice way to ease into the language. It makes me realize how much there is to learn, though. I had to use our internal JSON paring library and create a dictionary to assign the appropriate language given a data source provider. Good stuff.

Self-Project I finally came up with a project idea and have a pretty reasonable scope! The idea isn't earth-shatteringly interesting or unique, but I like it and will be able to see it through.
I just started to put together the prototype design document, but it is an interesting little project that will require accessing or storing data, manipulating it into a given format, and then creating a mobile app to serve it up on mobile devices. I think mobile is the best platform for what I want to do, plus it is good skill expansion.

1/4 of the way through Discrete Mathematics

I got my hands on a copy of Discrete Mathematics with Applications. Half-Price Books for the win! It does help to be two blocks away from the HPB closest to the university.
So far, it has been mostly review for me. These first three chapters are mostly logic. I do approve of the emphasis, though. Next up, we start number theory, and I am looking forward to that. I am really hoping to finish this up before the next Principles of Computing class comes around. It would be so awesome to work on it again with this under my belt.
I should have my work review this upcoming week, and I am hoping to leave with a plan to get some coding work. I do write scripts for my own use, but having a feature task and going through the process of review and having code in production would be so fantastic.

Principles of Computing - Abandoned

I dropped the PoC class. I just came to the realization that I really needed to bone up on Discrete Mathematics before going any further in Computer Science. I found myself increasingly out of time every week, and cutting the math-heavy homework to focus on the mini-project. I'd rather be able to do both and really deeply understand the material than just trying to scrape a decent grade.

I really liked the idea of using the MIT courses, but without a set of answers to the problem sets, it is not clear to me how useful it is. It seems like such a good course too. The recitations and the exams *do* have solutions posted. Perhaps I can find exercises to fill in the gaps.

This seems to be my only option, as Coursera doesn't appear to have anything that will fill my needs any time soon. Doing a quick search isn't turning up any alternatives of the same caliber of the MIT course. Bleh. What is frustrating is that there does appear to be a site with links to solutions, but all password-protected. Rats.

This site had some suggestions ofr courses as well as books. I thought this Discrete Mathematics Book by Epp looked promising, but for $200, I'm going to have to think seriously. Amazon does allow for rentals. Maybe there is a cheap version from the library? The other books in pdf on this site needed Haskell. Not sure I want a programming and mathematics combination.

Hm. It was a lot easier at university. Classes were pre-determined, and all anyone had to do was sign up, pay the crap load of money for the class and books and fees, and then make it through. Piece of cake :)