Informatica – Computer Science

Hello readers,

I have been a bit quiet the past few days but I have been really busy with my new study: ‘Informatica’ (in Dutch) or better known worldwide as ‘Computer Science’!.

I started with this study six weeks ago and I really like it. We are now learning the programming language Python. And this we do in different ways. Partly by learning from the book ‘Think Python’, written by Allen Downey and published by O’Reilly. Mostly by just doing lots of exercises. Last week I learned and programmed how to play the little game ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ against the computer. The one who wins five times in total first, wins!

Besides the programming course ‘Development’, I am also following some other courses. The course SLC (Dutch, stands for study career coach), or better explained as personal development in your educational career; is about your personal development during studying. For example I have to make a portfolio website about myself and keep this up to date during my educational career. The whole year I will follow this course. This is mainly about developing competences about myself as a computer scientist. Knowing my strength and weakness, planning my educational career and after the time of being a student, and so on…

Another course is named Skills. This is also a course I will follow the whole year. In this course we learn how to develop other competences such as:

• Analyze and interpret: letter and report, expertise and technology application.
• Organize and execute: plan and organize, deliver results and meet the expectations of the client.
• Support and cooperation: working with people, remain faithfull to principles and values.
• Interaction and present: relating and networking, persuading and influencing, presenting.
• Adapting and mentally strong: adjusting and coping with change, deal with pressure and adversity.
• Entrepreneurship and perfomance: reach personal work goals, entrepreneurial and commercial thinking.
• Create and conceptualize: learning and investigating, exploring, creating and innovating, formulate concepts and strategies.

We are with Skills now learning a new method named SCRUM which is used nowadays a lot at businesses in the IT sector. A lot of this method is explained in the book ‘Scrum voor Dummies’ [NL] / ‘Scrum for Dummies’ [EN] written by Michael Franken.

Last but not least for this term, I am also following the course ‘Analyzing’ which is split up into two parts: ‘Design & Usability’ and the part ‘Introduction Problem Solving and Analysis’. This is a very interesting course but sometimes a bit vaguely. I had to analyze some websites and make a design for improvement. Besides the programming course ‘Development’ this is the other main course.

After the complete course of ‘Analyzing’, I have learned the competences of:

• Design & Usability:
  • making a design analysis
  • making a storyboard and flowcharts
  • scetching user interfaces
  • and usability testing
• Problem Solving and Analysis:
  • Problem decomposition
  • Programm Structure Diagram
  • Identify Interest Groups
  • Context Diagram – Event Bubble – Data Flow Diagram
  • Process modeling at three levels.

Now I have explained a bit about my new study ‘Computer Science’, which I am following in Rotterdam. Some other posts will come up who are related to my study.

What are you studying at the moment?