Tag Archives: learning

Mathematical Modelling of Football

Posted on November 25, 2020 | 2 comments

This fall I took the course Mathematical Modelling of Football from Uppsala University. It was taught by Professor David Sumpter, and I believe this is the first academic course of its kind. The main subjects covered are modelling and analysis of events (on the ball actions), movement and pitch control (tracking data), player evaluation, and match result simulations. There were also several guest lectures from (among others) William Spearman, lead data scientist at Liverpool FC, and Javier Fernández, head of sports analytics at FC Barcelona.

The tools used were Python (using Anaconda) with NumPy, Pandas and Matplotlib. The course was a lot of work, especially the assignments, but I really enjoyed it and learned a lot.

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Programming for Grade 8

Posted on December 17, 2017 | 11 comments

For the past two months, I have been helping my son’s grade 8 class to learn to program. All students wrote Python programs and got a feel for what programming is. This post has details on how we organized the course, code examples and lessons learned. Continue reading →

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Posted in Learning, Programming

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Developer Book Club

Posted on November 8, 2016 | 10 comments

dsc_0333For several years now, we have been running a developer book club at work. We pick a book relevant to software development, and read a chapter a week. Every other week we meet for 30 to 45 minutes and discuss what we have read. It is quite popular and useful, so I thought I would describe how we do it, and why having a book club at work is a good idea. Continue reading →

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Posted in Learning, Work

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Learning From Your Bugs

Posted on April 28, 2016 | 9 comments

DSC_0663Bugs are great learning opportunities. So how do we make sure we learn as much as possible from the bugs we fix? A method I have used for more than 13 years now is to write down a short description of the bug, the fix, and the lessons I learned.

Way back in 2002, I came across a blog post by Bill Wake that described this method. I have used it ever since, and I believe it has helped me become a better software developer.

Every time I fix a particularly tricky or interesting bug, I take a few minutes to write down some facts about it. Here is an example of a typical entry: Continue reading →

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Posted in Debugging, Learning, Programming, Testing

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Ph.D. or Professional Programmer?

Posted on March 7, 2016 | 11 comments

When I graduated from university with a degree in Computer Science, I wanted to continue and get a Ph.D. But I also wanted to work as a software developer, so I worked for five years in industry before going back to do a Ph.D. I spent one year as a Ph.D. student before deciding that I liked professional software development better. Even though this was many years ago, I think some of the lessons I learnt still apply. Continue reading →

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Posted in Learning, Programming, Work

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Coursera Course Review: Software Security

Posted on October 20, 2015 | 6 comments

I just finished taking the course Software Security from the University of Maryland via Coursera. It was a relatively easy course (at least if you know C) that gave an overview of the following areas: buffer overflows and other memory attacks, web security (including SQL injection, CSRF and XSS), secure design, static analysis, symbolic execution, fuzzing and penetration testing. The instructor, professor Michael Hicks, was one of the more pedagogical lecturers I have listened to, and the whole course was quite enjoyable. Continue reading →

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Posted in Learning, Programming

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Programmer Knowledge

Posted on December 15, 2014 | 8 comments

What is the half-life of programmer knowledge? It is quite common with claims that the half-life is something like 5 years. In other words, half of what you know about programming will be obsolete in 5 years. A similar sentiment is: “Programming sucks, because what you knew a few years ago is useless now”.

At first, this seems plausible. After all, there is a steady stream of new programming languages and technologies coming out. However, I think it is wrong. Programming knowledge is much more long-lived than some people realize. Continue reading →

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Posted in Learning, Programming

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Coursera course review: Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 2

Posted on February 18, 2013 | 8 comments

I recently finished the Coursera course Algorithms: Design and Analysis, Part 2 by Professor Tim Roughgarden of Stanford. I’ve already reviewed part 1, and here are my thoughts on the second part.

The main theme of part 1 was the divide and conquer paradigm. In the second part the main themes were greedy algorithms, dynamic programming and NP-Complete problems. The lectures were excellent, with clear and easy to follow algorithm development and proofs. At six weeks, it was one week longer than part 1, and I found it quite a bit harder than part 1. Here’s more on each part. Continue reading →

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Posted in Learning, Programming

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Coursera course review: Design and Analysis of Algorithms I

Posted on May 8, 2012 | 22 comments

I recently finnished the Coursera course Design and Analysis of Algorithms I, given by Professor Tim Roughgarden of Stanford. This was my second on-line course from Coursera (last fall I took Introduction to Databases, which I wrote about here), and I thought it would be interesting to compare  the two.

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Posted in Learning, Programming

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Introduction to Databases – On-line Learning Done Well

Posted on December 18, 2011 | 10 comments

Last weekend I finished the free on-line course Introduction to Databases taught by Professor Jennifer Widom of Standford University. The course was given entirely over the web, with pre-recorded video lectures, and assignments and exams that were automatically graded when submitted. I didn’t quite know what to expect when I signed up for it, but I have to say that it was a great experience. It took quite a bit of work, but I did learn a lot.

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