Small personal update

I have received some mails about my post "Software engineering at Aalborg University" and every one seems to think I still attend the Business Academy of Aarhus and their program for Computer Science.

So just a little update:

I graduated from the Business Academy in start of June and worked at the University of Aarhus for 3 months.

Then I moved to Aalborg to attend the software engineering program at Aalborg University so that what I do now.

Work: currently unemployed, so if you know a place with a position for a backend student developer I would be really happy 

Grow up iditos

Funny caption?

Well it is a cover for a subject which annoys me a lot.

It seems like lately people in the hardware industry, seems more interested in ranting on others products instead of developing some awesome projects themselves. 

Why would Microsoft compare a Surfaces to an iPad, or Samsung comparing a Nexus Note to a smartphone and yes the iPhone colour are coloured - and not just compare but trying to completely destroying the other product?

I think a Surfaces is for another user group than an iPad, so why the need for a comparison? in the end a Surfaces is to me not a tablet and Nexus Note why compare a tablet to phone?

It seems to me like the manufactures has lost it, they should be learning from each other not steal nor blame

know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss

Seriously start to use some more time developing and create awesome stuff, like you already do. This is to all of you: Apple, Nokia, Microsoft, Samsung and so on. 

Software Engineering at University of Aalborg #2

The different courses so far

As a part of the software engineering program, one will undertake approximately 3 courses per semester. And since I am currently on the first semester I will talk about the three I currently are following.

Imperative Programming 

Is programming course, where you will be taught the principles of imperative programming and simple algorithms and basic structures in programming. The language in which the taught skills are utilised is ANSI C.

C grands the students a basic understanding of what programming, with out the need to learn more advance thermos like Object Oriented design.

Later in this course we will also be taught basic data structures.

For me this course is a bit boring since it is more a welcome home course - Since I have been coding for a long time. 

Linear Algebra - A matrix approach 

At AAU Linear Algebra is a must have course, which teach you the principals of Linear Algebra, with basis in matrix and the utilisation of these 

Problem-based learning in science

is a course which introduce the students to the way of teaching, which is the foundation of the science educations at AAU.

Under this course students will also be taught how to write a scientific report at utilise it and work in teams. 

 

Software Engineering at University of Aalborg

For the first time in 3 years I am back in college studying at the University of Aalborg (AAU) and following the program for a bachelor degree of science in Software Engineering, which is a program under the School of information and computer technology.
So now I been back in "school" for about 5 weeks and here is my thoughts on the program so far.

Problem based learning

AAU base their way of teaching on a principal of problem based learning, which in basic means you are given a problem or have to find a problem and the solve or try to solve it. 

This means that the way you learn is by a pratical approach and often in teams, so not only do you learn to solve a problem. You also learn to work in a team and you learn to think and analyse problems with a scientific perspective 

What they do for the social enviroment

First day all new student meets in the city centre and share breakfast and you are sitting with your new fellow students. 

Then the next couples of weeks there will be a hole lot of social arrangements to russell all up and 

together, parties, sports events and boat race.  Unfourntually for me I had to work so I can't describe this in all its glory.

Later I will talk about the different courses 

A small rant about Apple

For about 5 years now I have been back on the Apple platform, and what has happened annoys me a bit.
The overall points are:

• Product line-up 
• Userfriendly 
• Shitting in the developers backyard 

Product line-up

Diversity is good and design is good. But in both cases it has to make sense. Perhaps I  am blind, but to me the Apples line-up has become bloated. They try to do to much, with a single line-up and there focus has moved from Laptops and Desktops to more well not unimportant, but in my case less userable products.

I mean seriously, no one, NO ONE. Can use an iPad for programming or application designs, nor pro photo edditing.

Userfriendly

Mac App Store is a great idea indeed. But it will (not as it is now) become my main source for applications. Because there are almost no GPL/BSD licenses, and my favorit applications are not in the App Store.

And forceing users into using the App Store is plain old EVIL.

Sandboxing 

You satans minions. I like to throw my files in to random places and organize them just as scrambled as my own head. Stop forcing it up on me to fit into your pre decide boxes. This is not userfriendly this is plain old dictatorship without reason

Shitting in the developers backyard 

So what do I mean by this. First of all I agree XCODE is awesome, and the resources on the Apple developer portal is great. But as we went from Snow Leopard to Lion and currently Mountain Lion. It seems to me that Apple keeps setting boundaries for the developer rather than help them. why do we need to sandbox our apps? Why can't we access the GPU to make awesome games? ...

How to check disk usage in Terminal

Though I mainly use OS X, I am very found of using the Termnial for many tasks.

Amongst those task is to check disk usage and I am often ask how one does that, so here we go.

Command: 

The command for checking disk usages is: df Which simply gives you this:

Which is almost useless to people who are not nerdy enough.

df -h

By being at little crafty there is a flag, to the df and that is df -h, the -h gives you a human readable layout. 

This also works on Linux, BSD and Solaris.

Using OS X and Mac doing AP CS study

I have for the last 5 years used Mac OS X for my different study, for short

• Technical college Aarhus N (High School)
• B.Sc Computer Science Aarhus University (Incomplet)  
• AP. Computer Science Business Academy Aarhus - Viby J (Current) 

But enough of that, what is this post about? This post will be concerning what it is like to use OS X doing my AP study.

First 3. semstres

Well the first 3. semstres was pretty easy, with a few exceptions. 

The first 2 semstres are based on technocligeis which has no problems running on OS X. We used Java as programming language, Blue J and Eclipse as IDE's and Visual Paradigmen as UML editor, which all run luckily runs on OS X and Linux. So there was no problems with the software and techs. But of course there where problems.

SEND M$ Office to the deepest pits of tartarus

Even the teachers on a Software development education, is in love with the moste freaking annoying office suite on the planet. And the teachers of course expect all to have this office suite, so they are using .docx and pptx and so on. Which is so freaking annoying because I did not have the suite installed, but I had Libre Office and iWork installed which do not work well with .docx. So this was / is very annoying and some of the teachers where not even willing to convert the documents to .pdf.

CAOS

CAOS = Computer Architecture and Operating Systems is a subject where we among other things to a look at databases. This of course is fine since so many applications are storring persistent data in databases. But many danish companies are very very M$ loving, so of course we had had to use M$ Sql database. Which is an awesome database and have an awesome Management System. But of course that does not run on OS X. But we are givennen a MSDN (now DreamSpark) account so with VirtualBox, Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Sql Server 2008 we where on a role. Simple solution to a simple problem, but I still hate to use Windows for development.

4. semester

The C# semester, I hoped to be able to use Virtual Box once again. But this time that was not enough.

1. of all, hardware problem:

My MacBook Pro is an fall 08 unibody, which meant:

• 1.8Ghz Core2Duo  Intel CPU
• 4GB DDR3 Ram 
• 320GB @7200 HDD

Which is not enough for a Virtual Machine and running Visual Studio 2012 at the same time. So I ordered and 8GB kingstone ram package and 720GB Hyrbid drive and believed was enough, but no.

So I had to used bootcamp, installation was simple. But a worse user experience you will have a hard time finding. My fans are almost always running at full speed and even in idel mode the damn system is using 3.44 GB of my rams, So in basic it is hell to use.

Conclusion

For the first couple of semesters it is nice to use OS X and Mac if you can convince the teachers to use .pdf. But at the 4. semester you will either need a very powerfull Mac like the new Retnia MBP's otherwise I would shift to a Windows computer, which for me would be hell.   

  

Well HELLO.

A bit of introduction.

I am young male, from Denmark and use most of my time on nerdy things like maths and programming. I have a flare for agil and open source software development, and my favorit programming language is Ruby.

Introduction DONE 

What will this blog be about? Well mostly random nerdy stuff like Linux, programming and books from time to time. 

Hope you will enjoy.