Almost There

Classes have begun, but the work really hasn’t.

It’s one of those strange situations where you know you’re going to have a lot of work to do, but it’s not time to do it yet. I’m just reading the extremely boring and somehow essential first chapters of my textbooks. Tomorrow I have my first lab, where I will write my first programs in a language called Haskell. I’ll feel like I’m finally doing something productive.

Judging from the first couple lectures of each of my classes, I think I’m going to enjoy the more technical ones better, the ones about the computer languages themselves. Programming Languages doesn’t just teach you various computer languages, it teaches you how to learn computer languages, because in a real job it’s normal to have to learn a new one (or two…). Somehow I find that more interesting than the more theoretical classes, for example about the “software life cycle” (the process of creating a large-scale project), etc. I thought I might find Interactive Systems interesting, which is basically about human-computer interaction and how to design software so it’s easy to use, but the first few lectures have been kind of boring. We’ll see.

Interesting fact: two of my professors are American. I think only one of them is from Scotland, the rest sound English. Between the two Americans, though, they say “zed” instead of “zee” and “shed-ule” instead of “sked-jool.” I wonder if they’re just trying to fit in with how the majority of students and staff talk, or whether they’ve naturally picked up those ways of speaking.

Photo: I couldn’t resist taking a shot of this. I pass it every day on my way to classes. It’s an old-style police box, but it’s also what the TARDIS looks like, if you’re a Doctor Who fan. In that case, it’s epic.