I feel that I am not mathematically inclined… But I do consider myself a decent developer / software engineer… It is nice to see proof that others think this is possible.
About the Flying Spaghetti Monster Reference.
Since I graduated from my undergraduate program, I’ve been looking forward to enrolling in a masters program. I’ve put this desire far behind other things that have come up and I’ve decided that this year is the year.
I began by looking at different masters programs in my area. Below are some of the schools and programs that I’ve looked at. Ultimately, I’ve selected DePaul. I’ve know/known of a lot of people who have gone there and while they might not be the best they seem very good. I’m not MIT material, so I think that very good will suite me well.
There is no one reason that I selected DePaul. I was looking around the CDM building and it felt like a good school. I had some interaction with a professor and that interaction was positive and they fit most of my criteria that I was looking for in a graduate school. It wasn’t a perfect fit but I don’t think that any school would be…
I’ve selected the Software Engineering degree because I think of my self more as a software engineer than a computer scientist. I’ve posted both links for those that are interested.
http://www.cdm.depaul.edu/academics/Pages/MSinSoftwareEngineering.aspx
http://www.cdm.depaul.edu/academics/Pages/MSinComputerScience.aspx
Loyola is further from my home than DePaul is; this was the biggest reason that Loyola lost out to DePaul. But furthermore, they didn’t have a M.S. of Software Engineering degree. They have similar degrees but the Software Engineering title became important to me.
http://www.luc.edu/cs/_academics_graduate.shtml
The campus is too far from my home. It’d be difficult to attend classes and continue working.
http://www.iit.edu/graduate_admission/programs/areas_of_study/telecom_software_engineering.shtml
Northwestern isn’t a likely candidate. They were an early favorite but they don’t seem to put much effort in their science degrees… They are mostly known for their business programs… Their MBA program is one of the best, according to many…
http://www.scs.northwestern.edu/grad/mscis/
Roosevelt is not likely for me because they are more of a business school then a technical or general university.
http://cs.roosevelt.edu/academics/compsci/degrees/csms.html
Yes, I know stack Overflow isn’t a university. I posted some questions to gather information from the community… I wanted to share the links…
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/808546/grad-school-for-compsci-and-or-software-engineering
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49054/computer-science-versus-software-engineering-which
Lets ignore this post from “The first challenge” on… I don’t know what I was thinking.
Have you heard of competition-style programming? There is a website/company called TopCoder that organizes this. When I first found it, I thought it was a wonderful idea and I signed up for the site. Somewhat unfortunately, they some how sell services to end companies on the backs of these programmers. I don’t understand the details and I don’t know if the programmers get paid but this idea turned me away from using the site.
During my time of interest, I’ve never had time to run though a practice match, let alone a real match. I do know a little bit about the site and I still like the idea, so I’ve decided to derive a similar thing but only without the “competition” part of it.
My idea is simple: Post a programming challenge and let developers come up with different solutions. My idea is to include no limitation on platform, programming language, SDK, etc. Just implement a solution and then optionally share your solution. I’d also encourage an explanation on why one chose the route they did.
The important difference between TopCoder and my idea is that there is no winner. Ever. The idea is to have different solutions and to allow other people to go though the different solutions and learn from them. In my opinion, every solution is a good solution. Now, I do realize that there truly are better solutions than others but in a business environment, only a single solution is produced and normally that solution is considered acceptable.
Again, the idea here is to learn. One who wants to learn is likely discouraged from participating in something like this, thinking that there is someone who will produce a better solution than they… so why bother? I am in that boat, when it comes to TopCoder.
Given my outline above, I prose this quick challenge: Write a program to calculate one’s age down to the second. You can go as far as to allow the user watch the time increase as they watch the program. Of course, variations of this are welcomed and I encourage you to add further features. If you’d like your solution posted, please feel free to email [Frank[at]TheOpenSourceU.com] it or you can post it to your own blog and I’ll link to your blog post. Simply e-mail me the URL (or post the link in the comments below).
If you share your solution, I’d suggest that you select one of the open source licenses.
Recent Comments