Hey everyone, YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS.
Tetris's "I think you want to know about me but I know you don't give a damn" post~! I'm not an active member, so I try to fit in with talking about myself.
I know what you're thinking "Oh he's such a douche"
Neways, just a few developments about life that may be interesting to some. First off, the internet is AMAZING (I assume you all are aware of this). Modern knowledge today is totally outclassed by what you can access from the internet, universities even, are obsolete because of the fact that you can literally learn what they teach with the vast resources the internet offers. Do get into a university that pushes you rather than one that just wants you to regurgitate X and Y, it'll pay off, trust me. Speaking of university, I feel that university, in general, is VASTLY overrated. The only thing that they have good going for them right now is the prestige that you get with the universities degree, that's it. It's a pathetic situation that wee need to pay thousands of dollars to these damn institutions to prove "what wee know." Dammit.
Also, to anyone considering taking Computer Science, do re-evaluate what you really want to do. Computer Science is a field easily accessed and explained, thus, universities aren't really needed when it comes to this. A smarter use of your university time would be doing something that is not easily accessible to the normal person, like chemistry. That way, if you turn out hating chemistry, you'll still be able to get a job because NOT MANY can do that science without the help of the resources that universities provide. If you want to take computer science in university, you're going to really, REALLY, want to do it. I mean, you're dreaming algorithms before going to sleep. This field will be SWAMPED in individuals who do it on their own time, even then, there will be individuals outside that will rape your spoon because of the nature of the the knowledge and practice pool associated with computer technology (programs can be written from any computer, books gathered online, forums, etc.).
It's all about beating the competition unfortunately, always evaluate your next move, and DO WHAT YOU LOVE!
I'm really starting to love statistics, it's the only university course I feel that's worth my time this year, and I do strive to achieve 100% attendance in it, it's also fudgeing hard as balls as well.
Enough of that, some of the stuff I've been working on is website design. I know, it's really late to the party (19 years old and trying to figure out how to CSS, durr)but I have to admit, it's a lot of fun! Speaking of fun, it's also ridiculously easy to write up a simple (but snazzy) website, just goes to show that all those abbreviations and what not really just put you off from seeing that the knowledge background involved is like adding 1 + 1.
I'm still far behind anyone here though I assume, but I'm learning and the most important thing is that I'm having fun and abstracting ideas.
Learning should be fun, it's too bad that school totally rapes all the fun out of learning.
Most important part of the post that you can take away with it, book reccomendations!
CSS The Missing Manual: This guy is a total casual and you can tell, but he really knows his spoon when it comes to web design. Obvious mac user that explains thing in a very babby sort of way, can be frustrating because of his redundancy. Overall it's an AMAZING book for starters, specially people like me, but you can easily just read the first few chapters and really get the hang of CSS. The latter chapters are just "doing stuff that's cool", you'll probably revisit this book when designing your site.
JavaScript the definitive guide: This book is not for beginners, the explanations are long and...just really redundant at times. I feel this author could've cut this book down by half, but at least you're getting anything and everything related to JavaScript. Do get acquainted with Object oriented programming and you can skip to the client-side javascripting. The first chapters are where he tries to teach you programming 101, but makes it ridiculously difficult to understand because conventions are skipped and introduced, if you go with this, you will become a very bad programmer for other languages due to the leeway you're given in java script, it's also fudgeing confusing!. Overall a good book IF you are already a programmer.
I would keep talking, but I want to get back to my books, too tired to type :/
P.S. As much as I strive for coherence, it'll only make my posts a lot longer, so I just jump from one chain of thought to the next, I think you'll appreciate it ;)