blog.zacbrown.org - just run away, now.

Is it just me or am I the only geek/nerd bored out of their minds in class. I’ve loaded myself fairly well with 17 credits this semester. I have (technically) 4 CS classes, though 2 are linked together. I’ve also got a chemistry course and a marine science course plus their labs. It seems like I sit through each course bored out of my skull.

My Data Structures & Algorithms class is fairly interesting but only mildly so. Software Engineering is a bore at best… it seems a trivial class with common sense being the basis. Computer Architecture & Organization is decent, though we’re only working with boolean algebra and logic circuits which were covered in a class I took last semester (Discrete Mathematics).

I try to load myself down with courses, and if you look at the actual course numbers for the classes you can see my attempts as I’m only a sophomore. The courses as follow:

• CSC517 - Data Structures & Algorithms - 3
• CSC402 - Data Structures & Algorithms Practicum - 1
• CSC531 - Software Engineering - 3
• CSC314 - Computer Architecture & Organization - 3
• CHM111 - Principles of Chemistry - 3 (This class is the higher level version of chemistry)
• CHM113 - Chem Lab I - 1
• MSC111 - Intro to Marine Science + Lab - 3

One would think with two 500 level courses I’d be at least somewhat challenged but not so much. Are there any geeks/nerds who have now gone into grad school or who have already gotten their grad school degrees who suffered from a similar case of boredom in undergrad?

Ah yes, its that time again, time to go back to classes and take courses and all those fun things. The best part though is taking classes you shouldn’t be taking the course because you already know the information because most of it is common sense for those headed into your field.

Thats me this semester. I’m taking CSC314, Computer Architecture & Organization. On this glorious first day of class we discussed the components needed to build a basic computer… why are we talking about this again?

Most kids will never use this information in their Computer Science careers, let alone most of them won’t become very good computer scientists. Their programming skills are marginal at best and their knowledge of how different operating systems, programming languages, and so on differ and work is lacking at best, if not abysmal.

Now I’m not a crazy-super-awesome-mega programmer, but I know my way around a computer and I’ve done my share of programming in the last 7 or 8 years. I’ve spent hours working in different languages and worked two different jobs in programming. Its really sad when these kids aren’t even aware that an operating system besides Windows & Mac OS X exist, let alone that Mac’s use a different OS than PC’s do (for consumers).

I feel like this call to have more computer scientists is going to need to be pushed harder in high school. The worthless (at best) knowledge that most kids bring to college with them is not enough (in my opinion) to start out in Computer Science. There should be more high school curriculum and so on and on and on…
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Anyway, lets get back to learning about things I already know!