I volunteered for TechTrek this morning, helping out some grade 10s and 11s operate Greenfoot to program some crab behaviors. Afterwards, all the volunteers got together in the DLC for a lunch. Most of the guys, me included, got together around the central table, and a few others (including the 3 only girls there) sat on separate tables.
The conversation started off easy, laughing about the food, volunteering, and a YouTube video featuring a Korean girl saying "please, may I have some cock?" (she meant coke, go look it up!). Naturally, since this was a great big collection of computer nerds, the conversation took a huge turn to a discussion on the efficiencies of iterative vs recursive methods. I could follow along - after all, I did take CPSC 110 and CPSC 121.
But then the conversation evolved into talking about database management methods, efficient ways to transfer massive pieces of data across multiple servers, parallel and series distribution, how method speeds differs across different languages, dealing with data in cloud storage... Meanwhile, off to the side, a bunch of event coordinators and professors were discussion the future of some development software that I didn't really have time to listen in on.
Oh boy did I feel a good 3 years behind in understanding what these guys were talking about. Here I am struggling to get a piece of Java code to successfully parse XML (which I completed just now, whew), and these guys are talking about their strange/hilarious industry experiences and arguing about computer science concepts - during a lunch! If that isn't the pinnacle of nerdism, I don't know what is.
Other than finding the discussion (which I unfortunately dropped out of halfway through) incredibly fascinating, this will serve as motivation to push ahead in the computer science field, to get more exposure to various concepts, and to dabble around in different areas of development. Everybody's gotta start somewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment