The Lonesome Road

As you know, I had two exams today CC and OOMD (for expansion on those acronyms, see the previous post). The actual subject matter for these subjects come from core subjects in third year engineering. Basically CC is a single chapter of Systems Programming explored in detail and OOMD is the object oriented part of Software Engineering with an emphasis on UML. Now, the basis for Compiler Construction is grammar. The subjects that deals with this topic and it’s basics is Theory of Computer Science. This subject deals with the basics i.e. Automata, Grammars, interconversion and the machines (Moore, Mealy, Turing).

There is a reason behind all this technical introduction. The CC test today, for it’s first question had this problem :

Convert to minimum state DFA : 0+11*(00+11)*0*1
For those who do not know, this is a regular expression. Now, the answer is basically to convert this into a diagramatic representation and then reduce it. Simple enough and taught to us in TCS. But could we do it today? Nope. As simple as that. This sum, oddly enough, has come in the exam we gave for this subject - but today we all drew a blank on it.

It’s a very odd system of study that we follow here. We all study for the subject in order to clear the paper/practical/oral. It’s as simple as that. The moment the exam is over, we just forget all about the subject. It’s just wiped clear from our minds. And it’s something that’s not exactly helpful as can be seen. I know this problem exists in me as well and it was brought into sharp focus today. Looks like it’s back to the books. Two more papers to go - Operating Systems and Computer Networks.

Anyway, on a different note, I was invited for a Gmail account. Unfortunately, it seems all I can do is login. Then I get this beautiful blank screen. Tried it using IE as well as Firefox, but the results stay the same. What’s worse is I can open the other services Google provides me using the address. Had Anshul try it out and it seems to work fine. Will have to look into it later.

On a more positive note, my friend Alok put up his first post. Have a look at it if time permits

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