Title : CompSci6 – Fall 2008
Name : Charles-Franҫois de Lannoy
Short Name : Charles
From :
I first started using computers when I was about
9 years old to play the game “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego”. At the
time my family owned Macintoshes exclusively. In fact my mother still refuses
to buy a PC. For the next 8 years I used Macintoshes at home to write reports,
essays, surf the web, and play games while at school I used PCs in similar
ways, as they were the only types of computers available there. During my
undergraduate degree I was introduced to Linux operating systems as well.
On a daily basis my computer use mainly consists
of word processing, web surfing, and the use of mathematical programs such as
‘Mathematica’ and ‘Maple’. In addition, I have used MatLAB to code some simple
algorithms and will be using MatLAB and Origin for my research in graduate
school.
I am taking this course to familiarise myself
with computer programming because I have always had an irrational fear of
coding. In addition, I think that it is an invaluable skill that I will use
constantly throughout my career. My interest in computer science does not go
much beyond its personal utility, however I do enjoy logic games and abstract
mathematics so in this respect I can foresee that computer science may be very
interesting.
I imagine that a ‘computer scientist’ is anyone
that uses computers in a problem solving capacity on a daily basis. Given that
a great deal of modern industry is based on computers, and that engineers,
physicists, chemists, and other technologically inclined professionals use
computers, a ‘computer scientist’ is anyone that is able to write computer code
to develop solutions to technological problems. A less vague answer to the
question would be that ‘computer scientists’ develop algorithms to save time in
calculations, make processes more efficient by automating them, write code to
find approximate solutions to equations, create computer games and other
diversions, and produce simulations to guide research and technological
invention.
My worst programming experience was in high
school when I was supposed to learn ‘Turing’ computer language. It was a
terrible experience because the teacher was incomprehensible, nobody in the
class cared about the course, and I didn’t learn a thing despite somehow
receiving an A for my lack of efforts. My best experience however, was during
my undergrad while taking a Numerical Analysis course. In this course we were
put into groups and asked to solve a PDE that interested us numerically using
MatLAB. Although the work was divided between four people, I did manage to
learn a great deal despite not feeling fully confident about my abilities to
code. The most difficult thing about programming in my experience is the
syntax. I am able to think about the problem rationally and work out the
solution, but when it comes to telling the computer what to do I stall for the
simple reason that language of computers feels so foreign to me.
In the future I intend to use computers to
numerically solve mathematical equations and analyse data collected in my
research.