It’s been two months since I last updated – time to type! I’ve been extremely busy lately. In the middle of September I was in China again visiting my fiancé for a week. We’re very excited because she will finally be joining me in the U.S. on November 5th! It was a very hectic week abroad – mainly spent with her close family and friends and preparing things for her departure. In addition, my first week of college at OSU began while I was abroad. It wasn’t too bad because OSU provided a VPN I could use to get over the firewall during that time.
Also in September I had the hectic process of moving into a new apartment with a close friend from college. It’s definitely a step up from where I was living before and really something I am not embarrassed to bring my fiancé home to. Just last weekend, I finished acquiring all the major furniture needed for the house including a new couch, mattress and bed. I’m looking forward to just chlling out at home this weekend now that the place is finally furnished in an acceptable manner.
So now I am smack dab in the middle of CS 161 – Introduction to Computer Science. And so far… it’s going great! It’s stressful and demanding for sure, but that’s exactly what I was expecting. I am really glad to be moving forward in a positive direction for my (and my fiancé’s) future. Overall the course hasn’t been too difficult which I attribute to my previous programming experience. From the online forums, I know that there are a few people who are doing worse off than me, so I count myself as lucky.
This first class is focusing heavily on C++ and there have been a few stumbling blocks for sure, but nothing I wasn’t able to work out with a little effort. Some of the more new things to me include:
- named constants
- c-strings
- overflow and underflow
- output formatting manipulators (
setprecision,fixed,showpoint,left/right) cin.ignore()- the conditional operator (
expression ? expression : expression;) - switch statements
- enumerated data types (
enum Roster { Tom, Sharon, Bill, Teresa, John };) - sentinels and flags
- function protoytpes
- static variables
- reference variables
- overloading functions
- stubs and drivers
I have really been learning a lot and at quite a fast paces. I’m managing to keep up but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about next semester. This semester I’m only taking one class, but next semester I am set up to take two, AND my fiancé will be here. I need to juggle all of this while also working full time. It could get tricky. In any event, I’m hanging in there and it feels good to do so.