NAMIN-XO

I completed all the projects I wanted to from The Elements of Computing Systems (my Amazon review). I did 10 out of 12 projects, just leaving out projects 9 and 12 (the ones involving high-level programming in Jack). I had a lot of fun. My favorite project was project 8, which completed the VM translator. I learned a lot all the way (though, perhaps, less than I thought I would in the last project, the compiler from Jack to the VM). Highly recommended.
I am not sure whether TECS will be enough to prepare me for my Computer Architecture class. I definitely have the big picture of architecture in mind now, but I might need to supplement it with some 6.004 readings.

This term was a lot of fun. Specially Sussman’s class. In fact, I liked it so much that I am thinking of taking his other class next term (the idea of expressing a physical theory as an unambiguous computer program really appeals to me). Then, for my second class, which has to be in Systems (and unfortunately, there isn’t that many options next fall!), I hesitate between Operating Systems and Computer Architecture. I feel Computer Architecture might be more useful in the long run, specially for someone like me who hasn’t taken a solid undergrad class in architecture. However, I heard it’s boring, and Operating Systems is sure to be more fun (though probably more time-consuming!), as I’d get to write my own operating systems from scratch in the labs.

On to achievements:

• In Sussman’s class, my team and I had a really great time on the final project. We used the great book Building Problem Solvers (my Amazon review) as a base to implement a debugger for metabolic networks, BioHacker.
• In my research, I finally released my work as a real product, Micado. The latest feature I’ve added is automatic control inference & generation, though this is still not officially included yet.

Now, I only have my film music exam on Wednesday. I don’t think I’ll study much for it. Instead, I’ll be reading a few books:

• Reasoning about Uncertainty (my Amazon review) (at books24×7)
• The Elements of Computing Systems (my Amazon review) — This will be my primer substitute for 6.004. I intend to work through all the projects during the course of the summer.

So the term has started and I decided to take 6.945 and 21M.284 without even sampling 6.833. I am really excited about 6.945, and I am already done with the first problem set, which implements a nice abstraction for regular expression in Scheme.

In addition to my research assistanship (with Prof. Saman Amarasinghe and Bill Thies on computer-assisted design for programmable microfluidics), I’ll be taking two of the following classes this coming spring:

• 6.833 The Human Intelligence Enterprise
• 6.945 Large-scale Symbolic Systems
• 21M.284 Film Music

I hesitate between 6.833 and 6.945: do I want to become a better writer (6.833) or programmer (6.945)? In the short term, I might benefit more from 6.945, as it would perhaps apply to the work on JavaScript analysis I’ll likely be doing in the summer at Google Zürich. I’ll start by attending both and see which one I am more compelled towards: I guess it will depend on which class I feel would be more effective in its teaching.