Week Fourteen

            This is the fourteenth week of class as well as the last required post for this blog. With only one week left all that remains is to finish presentations and a test, but this means that most aspects of the class are concluded, because other than organizing the presentation there is no more group work, no more programming, pair programming or standard programming, and no more lessons from Professor Downing or any more guest speakers. Speaking of guest speakers, we had our final one this week, whom discussed start-ups and of the need for programmers as well as the possibility of future internships. Overall it was about as informative as the others, in that it showed how Professor Downing wants his students to be successful so he wishes to show of the many possible job avenues available to those with computer science experience, by having companies come in to discuss just that as well as the importance of internships, which just reinforces what Professor Downing already repeated tells us. So he seems very fond of the brute force, beat the idea into his students’ heads approach to get his point across, which is not necessarily a bad approach, but it can be a bit heavy handed at times because typically those who would listen already know or realize this after the first time and those who resist the idea typically will continue to resist the idea regardless of how many times the professor tries to convey the importance of these ideas to succeed in the job market, computer science or otherwise.

            The only other think of note that occurred this week was that the professor talked about the final test and what types of things would be on it, as well as some example problems. This is much appreciative, because it helps with studying for the final test. Oh and once again, the professor is recommending group studying as the best means to study. This is a fair point, but as with most forms of learning and studying, everyone has their own style of studying so for some group studying does not help and for some it does. Hopefully by the end of the class most have a good idea of what works best for them.

Week Thirteenth

            This marks the end of the thirteenth week of class, which means only two more weeks remain before both the final test and the end of the course. This week shed a lot of light on the character of the class and Professor Downing. The normal stuff occurred of working on databases and learning about SQL. However, we had a reading this week which was specifically about women in the computer science industry and how they are treated and how they are looked down upon if they do not meet so arbitrarily high standards to which males are not put to in the same manner. This type of social commentary is much appreciated because as opposed to ignoring the inequality of treatment of standing women face in the industry, he introduced it face on and even recommended a talk which would further discuss the issue, granted there was an irony in the talk he recommended, because it was the same talk the reading said was an incomplete talk of the issue.

            This week was also the week that the end of the project was due, which of course had its own stresses. However, Professor Downing kept a close eye on the posts and discussions of the students and due to the difficulty some groups were experiencing, he allowed them to have an extension on the assignment. And as a reward and to give his students a rest after completing the final project, he gave the class a day off. These acts show how much attention he pays to his students and how much he cares about both their academic states and their mental states, considering the project was very mentally fatiguing with all the attempts to try to organize the groups as a whole (something which never was fully accomplished due to some groups trying to do their own thing that they felt would make their lives easier at the expense of the other groups). So this gives a good idea on how he views his students and how much he cares about their education and their health, both good qualities for a professor.

Week 12

This is the twelfth week of class, thus only three weeks are left. The class this week went back to teach about SQL, which is good considering that seems appropriate for a database course as opposed to all the Python coding part, which has not to be fully explained to the relevance to the course since he has mentioned how this is not a Python course and has yet to tie it back to the database aspect of the course. There was also another guest speaker this week, who talked about alternatives to the relational database of SQL, known as NoSQL. Though there were many types as opposed to a single one, it is just that the overall idea is called NoSQL to categorize them. Anyways the project has reached the point where now the entire class has to organize, and I must say that it is going about as well as can be expected, which is slow, painfully, and without a clue whether it will all get completed in time for the due date Thursday. That is to be expected of a class of 48; because it is hard enough organizing a single group of six let alone eight, when each group is honestly only concerned about taking care of themselves and trying to manipulate the situation to best fit their specific group. There is no real incentive to work together. And then there is the issue of the presentation aspect of the project, where it is up to the other groups to grade each other. The issue with this is only the possibility of people being jerks to one another for any possible reason. Presumably people will not do so, but there is always a possibility of this idea backfiring if enough animosity builds up between any groups or individuals. Granted on the other hand there is also the possibility of groups going the easy route of simply giving everyone A’s to avoid actually doing much work or dealing with the other groups in anyway other than in this aspect of the project where the groups need to communicate.

Week Eleven

            This is week eleven, thus only four weeks are left. This week also marks the completion of the second part and the start of the final part of the project. Overall the project is going fine, the group members seem able to work together well and our project seems to meet all the requirements. Granted one member is especially amazing in his programming skills, which is a great asset to the group. The class for the week has been a bit peculiar. Professor Downing for the most part has continually specified that this is not a python course, but databases. However, the last week seemed to focus entirely on python coding and how immutable versus mutable data types. I am uncertain if this is being done to help with the coding aspect, but thus far I am not seeing the correlation between learning the data types and how they are stored and other aspects of their reaction in terms of memory and programming. I am waiting to see how or if it will tie in with the mySql databases or other forms of data storage. But other than that one confusion over the course material, the class itself is fine. The professor still cares about his students doing well, so he takes things slow with the material and tries to make sure that everyone understands and still punctuates his points with curses for emphasis, which still amuses me greatly. So other than the material the class is going well in terms of experience of the course and my feelings towards it. And only four more weeks of material to go, which also means registration is coming up. Not sure if anyone other than the professor and those in the class read these, but it is not a bad class to take. It just requires a lot of outside class time to program and study. However, the professor is pretty good and the material seems beneficial to learn in the long run of databases, excluding the recent material to which I am still unsure of how it connects with the databases.