Deciding on a Sem Break Todo List

Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Personal

Jeff has already got his list ready. I had a reading list some time back, but after some thinking (when I should be studying for exams), I decided to make some changes in plans.

You see, my interests in computer stuff was always influenced by someone. At a young page, my bro’s C programming stuff sorta drew me to computers. In seconday school, Xian Ming doubled my interests in web development. Most recently, a combination of Jinny and Jeff sorta make Linux sooo irresistable for me. Haha..

True, I know it’s more stable, KDE looks kinda cool, Amarok seems better than Foobar, Kopete looks like the best multi protocol IM ever. However, there’s still some problems. You see, I’m planning on exposing myself to an OO language, either Java or C#, for 2 reasons. Firstly, software engineering module next semester would require us to code out the entire project we planned this semester. I have to be really familiar with that language, coz I won’t have time learning it during that semester. I can imagine myself busy helping my teammates. Sigh.. Next reason, Microsoft Imagine Cup.

I do plan on giving my best in Microsoft’s Imagine Cup. However, since it’s Microsoft sponsored, I have to use a .Net technology. It’s a little stupid to use J#, so I’m practically left with C#. I don’t really like VB.Net’s syntax :p

There was a guide recently on installing Macromedia Studio on Linux with wine. However, I doubt you could do the same with .Net framework and VS.Net 2005. So unless you’re willing to sponsor me with a computer powerful enough to virtualize Windows on Linux, I doubt it’ll be usefull for me to install Linux.

So, after that lengthy explanation, I hope it’s clear why I won’t be giving Linux a well deserved try. It’s just not really practical, sigh.. Hence, here’s the plan for sem break. I’d probably be back in Ipoh on the 22nd (Sept).

  • Professional C# 2005 (Wrox). This book covers all the basic stuff like delegates and events, collections, generics, reflections. Stuff that I don’t know. It then continues to cover a whole bunch of other .Net related stuff. If the explanations are too brief, I’ll refer to Programming Visual C# 2005, The Language, Donis Marshall, Microsoft Press
  • C# Design Patterns, A Tutorial, James W Cooper (Addison Wesley) - like my bro said, design patterns and algorithms is more important than the language itself. An alternative: Design Patterns Java Workbook, John Metsker
  • Algorithms and Data Structure (using research and reference material from Monash), L. Allison. I don’t know how much of this will I comprehend, but I’ll just give it a try anyway.

Hey wait a minute, that’s just a reading list! Haha, yeap, I think I’ll be doing lotsa reading. But that’ll be dead boring! So here’s some “practical” stuff I’ll be doing:

  • I think Jnls.Net needs an “asides” section, for those short short posts. So I’m planning to create an “extended” version of the theme, placing the asides section on the right. Might have to sort out some stuff before going back Ipoh (56k connection), coz my local Apache doesn’t seem to be working.
  • A text editor? I’m sorta thinking to try my skills a little. Hopefully I can build a HTML/CSS editor in C#. Features I’m targetting are: code indentation and completion, syntax highlighting and tree view. The code completion that I’m refering too is like, adding closing tags after the user enters the opening tag, adding braces etc. Sooo, not easy. Hehe.. lotsa string manipulation I think

Whoops, so late already. Should continue on my Pendidikan Moral. Sigh, it’s so lame.. so much memorizing.. crap..

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Permalink | September 7th, 2006

4 Responses to “Deciding on a Sem Break Todo List”

  1. Jinny Says:
    September 7th, 2006 at 1:42 pm

    check out the mono project for .net on other platforms :)

  2. Jonathan Ng Says:
    September 7th, 2006 at 3:18 pm

    You see, Mono isn’t that mature yet. Here’s it’s FAQ on compatibility. It doesn’t fully support .Net 2.x yet.

    I don’t wanna worry bout compaibility first. Heck, I’m hardly familiar with the .Net framework. I think Mono was intended to allow developers to port .Net applications to Linux.

    It’s the same when doing web development with javascript or css. Making it compatible with all browsers just takes up so much time.

  3. jxm Says:
    September 11th, 2006 at 7:34 am

    “In seconday school, Xian Ming doubled my interests in web development. ”

    Did I? :P

  4. 拼凑Jeff » 放假的计划（小更新） Says:
    September 14th, 2006 at 7:42 pm

    [...] 上次不是说要重新安装Windows的吗，结果这几个星期一直给人（我们互相怂恿……）怂恿我再来安装Linux。于是……我动摇了，这几个星期也在开始筹备安装的准备工作。我的朋友目前最新的计划是……安装Linux来玩Virtualization（应该是通过VMware），因为我们开发软件还是比较Windows Based的。后来他也在考虑着用WinE来跑.NET Framework 2.0。我就应该是采用Dual Boot的方式，要写功课软件就跑Windows，做其他事情就跑Linux（应该是Ubuntu）。 [...]

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