In the Beginning
Once upon a time in the far off land of MIT Daphne Gould fell in
love with a handsome prince. They got married and had two lovely children. She decided to
stay home to watch her children grow up. She spent her time gardening behind a white picket
fence and she played with her children. All was well in the world.
The Monster
The children grew older. First the oldest went to school, then the youngest. Daphne no
longer heard the sing-song voices of children during the day. With the silence came an evil
monster. Its name was Boredom. Daphne tried to slay this evil beast as
she had done before, by being closer to her children. But alas, volunteering in the school
only kept the monster at bay for a short time each day, and as the children grew older, her
help was no longer needed.
The Quest
Daphne needed a better weapon to slay the evil beast. She thought long and hard and decided
the perfect weapon would be learning how to program. Thus she set out on a quest to find a
school to teach her programming. She did not particularly want to get another bachelor's
degree, however graduate programs required a knowledge in the field from the start and her
only knowledge was in chemistry and art. So she put on her red cape and packed a basket of
goodies and traveled farther from her home. As she climbed over mountains she saw in the
distance a village. Its name was Continuing Education. There were many shoppes there
and they sold a plethora of weapons, all of which might help Daphne slay the evil beast.
She looked into the window of the first shoppe. The shoppe was called the Lowell Institute
and its swords looked well balanced if a tad old. Unfortunately the proprietor has a sign
on the front of the building: *sold to Northeastern*. So Daphne sighed and went to the next
shoppe. She looked in each shoppe she passed and none of the weapons were quite right.
One was too small. One was too large. Finally at the end of
the village stood a very old building. Outside stood a sign:
Daphne went inside and lo and behold she found the weapon that was just right.
The weapon was called Certificate in Applied Sciences in Software Engineering.
The Trials
Now Harvard doesn't just hand out such weapons to anyone. You have to prove your worth to
them first. They require that you excel in eight different trials before they will give you
such a weapon. Daphne chose the following trials of which she did two each semester.
-
Introduction to Computer Science Using C++
This trial and Applied Statistics were the first of her two trials. Though the trial proved
easy in the end, she had much difficulty to start with. It had been many years since she had
been in a class and her skills were rusty. In the end she learned to write:
if(fairytale){HappyEnding();}.
-
Applied Statistics
In this trial she learned about multiple regression, confidence intervals and hypothesis
testing. She learned this so well she started dreaming: y = B0
+ B1x1 + B2x2
+ B3x12 + B4
x22 + B5x1x
2 + ...... Despite her soft bed, she would awake because the variables were
too hard to sleep on.
-
Data Structures Using C++ and Java
In this trail she learned the following things:
- Recursion: Where your children ask you to start reading the story again from the
start even if you haven't gotten all the way to the end.
- Linked Lists: A book with many short fairy tales, one coming right after the other.
- Queues: Where the mother gets to read each book one at a time in the order it was
bought.
- Stacks: Large piles of books where only the top one is ever read.
- Trees: When reading one fairy tale it reminds the child of a couple of other tales
that must be read before going to sleep.
- Searching: When the child can not find a book, the mother must find it for them.
- Sorting: When the mother still can not find the book and the mother must sort
all the books by title before it can be found.
- Graphs: When the children make little roads out of the books and follow the roads
by stepping on them. The mother must then yell at the children.
-
Programming Microsoft Windows Using the MFC
David Platt was the instructor for this trial, the first instructor our hero had that
was not an official Harvard instructor. He was also the hardest taskmaster of them all.
He made his students delve into the mysteries of Microsoft Foundation Classes and those
that survived his trial became champions and those that did not ... well they are never
heard from again.
-
Advanced Programming of Microsoft Windows Using COM
Daphne thought long and hard about taking a trial once again from the infamous Platt,
but she knew he was the best teacher she had had. They used his book The Essence of COM
with ActiveX by David Platt. In the end the trial was not nearly as hard as
his previous trial. Along with the regular homework, he only required a final project that
took an average of 150 hours to complete.
-
Practical User Interface Design
In this class we learned how to make everything look beautiful, how to pick out the
perfect font, spacing, and color, how to use metaphors and to understand our user.
-
Introduction to Website Development
In this trial Daphne is furiously typing: Trial in progress...
-
Introduction to Database Systems and Client/Server Computing
In this trial Daphne lists all her trials that have come and are currently in progress
(as is this one) and all their attributes.
The Ending
Since Daphne has not yet completed her last two trials, we can not know how the lady
will fare. Will she complete her last trials before being overcome by the beast? Will the
weapon indeed slay the beast as she suspects? Will her children eat all the cookies in the
house before she can get one herself? Stay tuned to
daphne@alum.mit.edu
to find out.
Read her story again ...
This fairy tail was written by Daphne Gould. It was last updated on the fateful
day of October 5 in the year 1998. http://www.gouldhome.com/daphne/homework2.html
This web page (http://www.gouldhome.com/daphne/homework2.html) was last updated on January 02, 2000.
For any comments or suggestions about the site contact Daphne Gould.
Contents copyright © 1999-2000 by Joel and Daphne Gould.
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