Sub Ubi

My students, for their last laboratory, are currently working on a piece of interactive fiction. The class diagram for their code should be an extension of something that looks like this:

Their code makes use of HashMaps to handle relationships between objects of different classes, and they are encouraged to do something creative with their work of interactive fiction. On Friday, to reinforce their understanding of the use of associative data structures, we worked an example involving a Book class, a Bookshelf class, and a Librarian class that brought these pieces together. Today, they proposed a set of classes of their own design, and with a partner, implemented the code for those classes. All of my students were successful in this task in a 45 minute session.

While I don’t think my students have mastered modeling the world as an interrelated set of classes, I think they’re on their way to thinking like good object-oriented programmers. At least, we’ve made a good start.

Hopefully, the things I’ve introduced them to will serve them well in their next course. Sadly, their experience in my class is completely different from the other section of intro, where they are currently studying matrix multiplication in C (but using Java).

Either way, I hope to share some of their works of interactive fiction when they are done. It should be entertaining.

From the Lessig Blog:

Please, don’t let this happen again. Please, if you’re an Obama supporter, do absolutely everything you can in the next 24 hours to make sure every single possible Obama vote turns out to vote. Volunteer for a phone bank, or use my.barackobama.com to phone bank from home. And beyond this, do the sort of things that too few of us ever have the courage to do: Express to your friends, and anyone you know, why you want them to support your candidate. Send an email with a personal story, or an argument important to you, to as many people as you can. Apologize for the intrusion, but intrude nonetheless. (How weird is it that engaging people about democratic issues in a democracy is generally viewed as inappropriate). And don’t let up until 8pm Pacific time.

4:25 Wake up five minutes before alarm. Make coffee, continue work on infrastructure challenges facing VWRR course.

6:00 Put out call to France, download virtual machine containing complete build system for robotics platform.

7:50 Shower.

8:30 Get in car, drive to campus.

8:45 Spend 15 minutes reviewing materials for Intro.

9:00 Intro. Answer one question, mini-lecture takes 45 minutes.

10:00 Fight technology more. Same story as the last two weeks.

10:55 Head into class. Eat leftover Halloween candy.

11:00 Admit massive fail to students. Technology won. Goal: do cool stuff with computing. Offer alternatives.

11:20 Bring huge tub of LEGO robots into class. Situation apparently salvaged.

12:30 Eat lunch while talking with friend about pending laptop purchase.

13:00 Student with questions about pending PL course.

13:15 Begin work on letter.

14:00 Student with questions about research. Completely fail to print copies of key papers to give to student.

14:40 Overrun into next meeting. Soda, conversation with faculty mentor.

15:30 Continue working on letter.

16:00 Conversation with new sysadmin about backups.

16:40 Continue working on letter.

17:00 Print letter on letterhead for mailing tomorrow. No envelopes left.

17:20 Talk to choir director about missing rehearsal. Obtain 35MHz oscilloscope for testing and possible rehab.

17:45 Head home. Stop by Obama HQ to see how things are going.

17:55 Home. Eat leftovers. See wife unit.

18:00 Begin testing software for LEGO Mindstorms.

18:30 Fail. Put out call to England for possible help.

19:00 Continue to fail with software.

19:15 Confirm fail with England.

19:30 Head back to OHQ. Make calls, stuff envelopes… just do stuff.

23:00 Head home. Pet neighbors cat.

23:15 Time to sleep fast.

http://velociraptorz.org/

I’m proud to say that a substantial portion of the executive team stayed at our house in the recent past.