Day 9
September 20, 2005 – 11:07 amWeek two of Software Carpentry, and things are starting to settle down. There are now 93 (!) people signed up for the course:
| U of T | Elsewhere | |
|---|---|---|
| Auditing | 18 | 21 |
| Enrolled | 25 | |
| Unknown | 29 |
Of those actually at the University of Toronto (as opposed to the
local hospitals—a few radiologists are sitting in) the breakdown
is:
| 16 | Computer Science |
| 14 | Physics |
| 9 | Civil Engineering |
| Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | |
| 5 | Biochemistry |
| Institute for Aerospace Studies | |
| 2 | Institute of Medical Science |
| Mathematics | |
| 1 | Astronomy |
| Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering | |
| Botany | |
| Geology | |
| Medical Biophysics | |
| Zoology | |
| Non-degree student |
This week’s lecture went much more smoothly than last week’s, in
part because we were in a larger room, with seating for everyone, and
in part because the content was an introduction to Python, which I’ve
given more times than I can count. There were still some glitches in
the slides, though: a few things were out of order, and I really do
need to choose more concrete examples. 33 students have completed the
first exercise, which is already more than I’d expected—I’m feeling
uncharacteristically optimistic right now 
The past week has also CSC49X, the fourth-year Computer Science project course. 23 students are working on 10 different projects (24 and 11 respectively, if you count
Sean Dawson’s paid-but-not-for-course-credit work on a sequence diagram debugger plugin for Eclipse). DrProject (our Trac-derived project management system) is holding up so far, and we’re almost finished setting it up for two other courses to use this term as well. Not bad for Day 9 of term; not bad at all.