Fall semester is in week 2 now and classes are starting to show their colors. I dropped the physics department’s solar system class, PHYS 2021, and the lab. They’ve been replaced with a TA class for CS 1316 and the 1 credit hour intro TA class for first timers. TAing has been fun so far and I’m glad I did it. CS 3210, Design Operating Systems, looks like it’ll be a fun class. It’s half lecture half lab, so we’re going to get our hands dirty with the kernel and such. CS 3220, Processor Design, also looks fun. We’re programming on real hardware, yet again getting our hands dirty. Finally CS 3300, Software Engineering, is interesting so far. The class is actually defining the requirements for the first project and then each group is working on a separate part, much like it would be done in the real world. CS 3300 seems like it will be the most work, there are a lot of document write ups, group meetings, and coding. Ok, it’s 3am and I work at 10am.. time to go.

My newest project involved me and a partner creating a program for Introduction to Information Security (CS 4235) where we crack a server’s password and send a message over a covert channel. My partner and I decided to do the program in C. The last time I programmed in C was when I was in Systems and Networks (CS 2200) in Fall of ‘07. Even then, the programs were usually pre-written with students needing to fill in methods. This program was from scratch.

The reason we chose C was because of the low level operations needed and also because me and my partner thought we should catch back up on our C skills. I’m glad we made the decision to do it. We were able to finish the program rather quickly and there is a noticeable performance difference with the program, more so then if we had written it in Java.

The whole experience made me want to learn C++ or C#. I’ve never used either of these languages and I’ve also never messed with Visual Studio. It seems like those are good languages to know since a lot of programs are written in them, especially C++. I also heard that the language to program apps for the iPhone is Objective C.

All in all I was happy to be writing in C again. There’s something gratifying working so low on the computing level and having more control over all resources, even though dynamic data structures can be a real pain. I hope my program doesn’t have any buffer overflows

Wow! Allow people to post comments without registering and you become a safe haven for prescription drug distributors to sell their products. Unforunately, there’s no kick back for me, so I had to change the permissions. Now the bot will have to become a user, which it won’t do, thus freeing my blog of spam, but also limiting the amount of traffic I get.

Life has been busy. Lots of projects, homeworks, tests, etc. due in the last weeks of the semester. My cs4400 group (Intro to Databases) has developed a nifty job posting application (i.e. Monster.com). My cs3240 group has developed a nifty interpreter for a highly advanced (sarcasm included) programming language called Micro. Basically you can multiply, add, subtract, exponentiate, and print to the console. I’m doing well in my other courses too. I’ll be posting my cs4001 project page soon, look for that.

Ok, back to the grind.