week1

This is the first week of my graduate studies. As a student from China, I think the object-oriented programming class here is quite different from the similar programming language course I took previously. 

I was surprised in the first lecture. I thought the professor would spend some minutes discussing the course requirements and course syllabus and began to talk about what is object-oriented. However, the fact is in addition to the course description, we got a chance to know other students around us, which makes it easier for us to choose a partner for future projects. For the rest of time, students are asked questions when reviewing a HelloWorld java program. I was confused about this part because I supposed not many students in this class already know how to program in Java or C++. To some degree, learning OOP is the same to learning Java/C++ from my point of view. But it seems to be wrong here.

In the second lecture the professor introduced requirements of our first project, which is quite impressive to me. The project sets a high requirement for coding, testing, and even compiling. Git is also new to me and looks quite awesome. When I learnt C or Java in China, the lecturer spent most of time explaining syntax, which is right and which isn't. Instead of doing compiling by command line and writing makefile when necessary, we relied heavily on IDE. Another point that is worth mentioning is that I like the seemingly heavy load of the projects. Even though it is the project 1, it is already complex enough for me. Many requirements of the project could help me to sharp my skills and find a good intern job in the summer.

As a result, I think the course will be very challenging for me. However, I am confident of gaining a lot through it. Hopefully I could know how to be a real programmer or even a geek after this course. 

In a word, the first week's classes are quite different from what I thought it would be. I have to spend more time on it to make sure I could be accustomed to such style of teaching and learning.