DEV Community: Abdullah Gira

Week 2: Natural Recursion

Abdullah Gira — Sun, 29 Jan 2023 20:38:53 +0000

One drawback of this course is that it introduces a new language, so we spend most of the time learning the aspects of this language instead of learning new concepts. This week is no exception. It introduces arrays and how to define functions and data definitions for them in SDL.

Arrays

Arrays in SDL have no indexes, you only have two methods, first and rest. The first method returns the first element in the array, and the rest returns the array without the first element. Therefore we use natural recursion to loop over the array.

Natural Recursion

Natural recursion refers to the process in which a function calls itself in order to solve a problem.

Example code in python

# first -> returns the first element in the array
def first(arr):
    return arr[0]

# rest -> returns the rest of the array
def rest(arr):
    return arr[1:]

# return true if all array elements are true
def all_true(arr):
    if len(arr) == 0: return True
    return first(arr) and all_true(rest(arr))

Importance of data design

The design of the data is actually making important decisions about the design of functions. (ref)

This post is part of a series about how I plan to revisit the CS bachelor and post a weekly update. You can read more about it here.

Week 1: How to code simple data

Abdullah Gira — Mon, 23 Jan 2023 10:05:06 +0000

This post was originally published on my blog: https://www.abdullahgira.com/blog/2023-01-23-week-1-how-to-code-simple-data

Last week's course was How to code simple data. Most of the content in the first weeks was introducing a new language called beginning student language, and some concepts that I liked and want to share in this post.

How to design functions

It talks about how to test your functions before implementing them and make sure you test the edge cases (TDD).

Data-driven templates

Data-driven templates are saying, given that I know what type of data this function consumes, what do I know about the structure of this function?

Templates are an idea that you can use throughout your career, no matter how sophisticated a programmer you get to be. When you get a hard problem and don't quite know how to do it, you first say, well, what do I know about the program's basic structure before I get to the details? That's an incredibly powerful idea.

White box testing

White box testing is when we know how the function is implemented so we test against that, in the opposite you have black box testing where you only care about the input and the output.

Oh one last thing, you can copy-paste images into the editor of this language!

Revisiting CS Bachelor

Abdullah Gira — Sat, 14 Jan 2023 11:01:58 +0000

This is a fun project. I want to revisit the Computer Science field after two years away from my graduate degree using free online materials from top universities worldwide. And I will share my journey on this blog.

Since I’m working part-time on this, I expect the duration of this project to be 1-2 years.

I initially considered the MIT curriculum but chose Open Source Society University (OSSU) since its curriculum has more engaging video lectures and practice problems than MIT's. The OSSU CS curriculum meets all of the requirements from the Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Science 2013, matching up nicely to those found on MIT OpenCourseWare. Though there are three courses offered at MIT not available on OSSU: Software Construction, Design, and Analysis of Algorithms and Performance Engineering of software systems, I'll add them to my curriculum.

One course I'm not sure about adding is Computation structures because the Core Systems section covers the course material. However, I will add it as a recap, or I might skip it altogether.

Optional books I might read

They are not in the curriculum but are recommended reads:

Data-intensive applications
Readings in database systems (5th edition)
Transaction Processing: Concepts and Techniques
Computer systems a programmer's perspective
Refactoring by Martin Fowler
Code Complete 2nd edition

Optional courses I might take

Constructive Computer Architecture (Re-validate after taking the Advanced programming section)
Great Ideas in Computer Architecture (Machine Structures) (Re-validate after taking the Core systems section)
Artificial intelligence (Re-validate after taking Sec: Core applications section)
Computer architecture (advanced) (Maybe consider after taking the Advanced systems section)

The curriculum

This is the curriculum as of now (the content updates frequently as new courses are discovered/created), I’ve marked courses I personally added as (Personal)

CS Core

Advanced programming

Parallel Programming
Compilers
Introduction to Haskell
Learn Prolog Now! (alt)*
Software Debugging
Software Testing
Performance Engineering Of Software Systems (Personal)

(*) book by Blackburn, Bos, and Striegnitz (compiled from source, redistributed under CC license)

Final project

Cloud Computing (Specialization)

If I include the curriculum and optional courses, I will exceed the undergraduate degree requirements according to Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Degree Programs in Computer Science 2013, but this is a fun project, so why not?

Throughout the curriculum, I will post weekly updates about my progress and notes from the books and courses I will take.

I will update the status on my blog as I go through the material.