I do consider myself a programmer. I have little formal education but I know how to write programs in various languages and I now have a plan to read SICP (I just have to learn some Scheme first).
Much of this blog will probably and hopefully be about my learning experiences as a programmer. There are some areas of which I think I have a pretty decent command (numerical programming, simulations, object oriented and procedural programming), but there are several areas in which I would especially like to improve:
-Algorithm analysis (knowing which algorithm to use where, complexity analysis etc.)
-Understanding what the deal is with functional programming.
-A higher low-level understanding of computers, in order to understand bottlenecks. Maybe I'll have to learn assembly at some point.
-Networking and communication programming, of which I have very little experience.
-I want more experience with open source projects. Reading other people's code, using git more effectively and actually contributing to code that is being used by others are all experiences that I think will help me improve a lot.
This all means that a lot of my programming posts will be very basic to a lot of people, and I will try to mark those with the "Quantity" label described in my last post (in addition to the "Useful" label).
And regarding the wish to contribute to open source projects - if there is anyone reading this who knows about a project that needs help, please let me know!
Showing posts with label input appreciated. Show all posts
Showing posts with label input appreciated. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Scheduling
In order to make this blog more of a tool for self development, I will now initially try to write one post a day. I am certain this will mean a lot of irrelevant posts, but I also think it's a necessary evil in order for this blog to be true to the goals stated in the "Why the blog?" post - especially the goals of "learning stuff" and "to practice writing". If I commit to writing a post a day, the idea is that this will both stimulate creativity and make me better at learning stuff, because one of the major sources of posts will probably be stuff that I'm working on and trying to learn - and I really do believe I will learn better once I write down what I have learnt.
However, this all means that a lot of my posts are going to be filler material. For instance, the above is the reason I am writing a separate post on scheduling instead of rolling all of this information into one post. I therefore plan to introduce another stratum of labels, in addition to the "Fundamental", "Useful", "Thoughtful", and "Brain Sputter" labels introduced in my last post. In addition to this layer, the new label layer will contain the two layers "Quantity" and "Quality".
Now, reading this post you understand what I mean by "Quantity" and "Quality" - it's clear from the context. However, a reader reading (duh) some other post on this blog, seeing the "Quality" label, without knowing the context, might assume that I am a class A narcissist ("Wow.. Saying that your own posts are 'Quality' posts.. who in the blazes do you think you are?") . This is unfortunate, because although I am a narcissist, I do not think I qualify for the A class designation, and higher-ranked narcissists might actually take offense. I am still going to risk this, because the thought is that the "Quantity" and "Quality" labels will be right next to each other if things work the way I believe them to, and so, as the number of "Quantity" posts goes steadily upwards while the number of "Quality" posts remains at a quite low number, people will understand the context and even laugh and snicker when they see it. That's how I imagine it, anyway.
As I said, this new label stratum will be added to the previous one. So a "Brain Sputter" post could still be a "Quality" post if it is some excellent brain sputter. I do think there will be some correlation between the "Brain Sputter" and "Quantity" labels, though, and I might do some analyses on this after a while. Also, "Fundamental" posts will not have this new stratum. They're just info about the layout etc. of the blog, and I don't want to classify them as quality or quantity posts.
I mentioned context above - this will not be the first time I have something to
say on context. I think lack of context is the source of several of the major problems of this world. But more on that later.
P.S. As far as I know, there's no way to choose to see posts that are marked with two specific labels. In other words, you can't choose to see all "Useful" "Quality" posts. If not, I want to try to look into if and how it can be done. If it can be done already, please let me know!
However, this all means that a lot of my posts are going to be filler material. For instance, the above is the reason I am writing a separate post on scheduling instead of rolling all of this information into one post. I therefore plan to introduce another stratum of labels, in addition to the "Fundamental", "Useful", "Thoughtful", and "Brain Sputter" labels introduced in my last post. In addition to this layer, the new label layer will contain the two layers "Quantity" and "Quality".
Now, reading this post you understand what I mean by "Quantity" and "Quality" - it's clear from the context. However, a reader reading (duh) some other post on this blog, seeing the "Quality" label, without knowing the context, might assume that I am a class A narcissist ("Wow.. Saying that your own posts are 'Quality' posts.. who in the blazes do you think you are?") . This is unfortunate, because although I am a narcissist, I do not think I qualify for the A class designation, and higher-ranked narcissists might actually take offense. I am still going to risk this, because the thought is that the "Quantity" and "Quality" labels will be right next to each other if things work the way I believe them to, and so, as the number of "Quantity" posts goes steadily upwards while the number of "Quality" posts remains at a quite low number, people will understand the context and even laugh and snicker when they see it. That's how I imagine it, anyway.
As I said, this new label stratum will be added to the previous one. So a "Brain Sputter" post could still be a "Quality" post if it is some excellent brain sputter. I do think there will be some correlation between the "Brain Sputter" and "Quantity" labels, though, and I might do some analyses on this after a while. Also, "Fundamental" posts will not have this new stratum. They're just info about the layout etc. of the blog, and I don't want to classify them as quality or quantity posts.
I mentioned context above - this will not be the first time I have something to
say on context. I think lack of context is the source of several of the major problems of this world. But more on that later.
P.S. As far as I know, there's no way to choose to see posts that are marked with two specific labels. In other words, you can't choose to see all "Useful" "Quality" posts. If not, I want to try to look into if and how it can be done. If it can be done already, please let me know!
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