Difficult UWaterloo courses (CS444 Compilers)

[Tony]

A while ago we had a thread on challenging CS courses at UWaterloo.

So this is a graph of my last week with CS444 Compilers:

[A.J]

Haha, almost identical to the graph of my week with PMATH352.

I was planning on taking Compilers next year. How is it?

[Brightguy]

Hmmm, just one commit at 11am... be careful, you may have started committing in your sleep.

And hey, at least your sleep cycle has a 24-hour period.

A.J @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:09 am wrote:

Haha, almost identical to the graph of my week with PMATH352.

You don't believe in prerequisites, do you? That is a crazy course though. The theorems feel like they're what someone would come up with if they were designing a fairy tale...

[A.J]

Or intoxicated. No, most of the theorems make sense, though they seem a bit useless for the time being, as we haven't looked at their applications much. However, there's a grad course that I wanted ot take, 'Analytic Number Theory', the requires Complex Analysis, aka PMATH352, as a prerequisite.

[Tony]

A.J @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 12:09 am wrote:

I was planning on taking Compilers next year. How is it?

CS 241? One of the best CS courses I've taken. Then again, I've had an amazing prof.

[A.J]

No, I mean CS 444. I hear a lot of the CS courses do require good profs though.

[Tony]

Seriously AJ, what's the deal with your prerequisites?

CS444 is seriously a lot of work. You get some basic high level overview of what's involved in a compiler, during the lectures. Then you get to implement seemingly obscure Java specs for assignments. And it's not like "here's a list of specs". It's "here's a 688 page book on Java Specification" http://amzn.to/gRIp3J we'll let you know what to not implement.

[Brightguy]

Tony @ Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:49 pm wrote:

So this is a graph of my last week with CS444 Compilers:

This also explains why I could never seem to find you in CS 442.

A.J @ Tue Mar 01, 2011 10:37 am wrote:

However, there's a grad course that I wanted ot take, 'Analytic Number Theory', the requires Complex Analysis, aka PMATH352, as a prerequisite.

I also have an inkling of taking that course (the last time it was offered I had too much on my plate), so maybe we'll bump into each other. Oh, and good that you do care about that prereq... I'm reminded of the time I took 'Algebraic Number Theory' without taking Ring Theory first.

[Tony]

Brightguy @ Mon Mar 07, 2011 6:56 pm wrote:

This also explains why I could never seem to find you in CS 442.

I think the fact that I dropped CS442 during the second week is a bigger contributing factor I think Adrian is still in that class though.

[CodeMonkey2000]

I plan on taking nearly all of the 4th year cs courses, and a huge chunk of amath and pmath courses lol. The thing is, I've taken a few bio, phil and psych courses and really enjoyed them and want to take more of those courses. At this rate, I think I might have to add a few terms to my degree lol. Or I might just drop out of coop, and go straight through taking a lot of courses.

It doesn't feel like we get enough courses in our degree to really learn a lot of cool things =/

[A.J]

That's true. So that's why, instead of taking a double major in CS and Pure Math, I decided to take a double major in CS and [Pure Math + CNO] (joint major). I didn't know you could take the latter until my roommate pointed it out.

[apython1992]

A.J, that's really cool, I had no idea you could take a double major with a joint major as one of the options. I thought i was being intense with wanting to do joint honours math and physics with a minor in CS Though my school probably won't let me do that anyway.

[A.J]

Why not? You should be able to do it. Talk to an advisor regarding taking the joint major and minor. I have still yet to talk to the math and CS advisors regarding getting my plan changed, but I doubt that they'll disagree with it, as they tend to go along with plans students want to pursue unless they feel it is too much or something.

[apython1992]

I think it's mainly because it would mean me getting more credits than students typically get before they graduate. I'm going in with 28 transfer credits (out of the 120 you need to graduate), which means I basically have a year's worth of credits already. I haven't talked to anyone about it yet but it seems to be a bit of a problem with a few people I know from there.

[CodeMonkey2000]

AJ about double majors, how does that work? Like let's say taking a course like CS 488 knocks out a requirement for CS and CO. Can I use that credit for both requirements, or only one? I think I can only use it for one major, and not both.

I still haven't decided on a double major yet, or a minor, right now I'm just taking courses randomly that I think sound interesting, lol.