And I am officially halfway through recurse! This blog post will be a typical weekly update with more of a reflection style to it.
Last week I felt not as productive, but I think that is because on Friday I spent a lot of my day packing up for the weekend trip I just did (Hiked Mount Katahdin in Baxter State Park). I wasn't able to attend the ML presentation due to trying to get all of my other work done within 4 days, but I still feel like I accomplished enough. The FP group and I finished up week 11 reading and homework which means next week we'll be finishing up the last week of CIS 194. These past few chapters dealing with Functors and Applicatives have been the most challenging by far since these are concepts that don't show up in imperative languages or non-pure functional languages. I'm going to set some time aside this week to read the LYAH modules on these topics.
For the compiler group, we read about code shape. This focused on topics such as control flow constructs, storing record type objects & arrays, and storage location assignments. This felt like a combination of the last few chapters while filling in details we didn't cover in those chapters. The more we read this book, the more we come across situations where there are multiple techniques to solve problems that are being addressed, and I feel like I am becoming more comfortable in intuitively deciding which one I think would make more sense. Since the Fall 2 batch recently started at recurse, we are starting a new compiler study group that will continue the reading as well as adding a day (Tuesdays) to take a more hands-on approach to learning about compilers.
Throughout these past weeks at recurse, I have truly felt like I have accomplished the vision for myself when it comes to self-learning. Being a recent graduate from college, I always had these things I wanted to learn about, but I just felt like I never established a good routine for myself to learn about topics outside of my curriculum. Recurse has brought this structure to my life that has allowed me to accomplish this vision. I never could have seen myself about to finish a self-motivated computer science course on functional programming, have read 300+ pages of a compiler textbook, and make real progress on a side project. This has had effects on multiple parts of my life as well. Ever since I have started recurse, I have been exercising 6, sometimes 7, days a week. I really can't wait to see what else I accomplish in these next six weeks.
Next week I plan on joining my typical meetings, and I am also going to check out the Designing data intensive apps book club. The main reason behind joining this is I want to learn about something I am not typically interested in (similar to the reason behind joining the ML presentations).
Until next time, ~ Dan