This Fall will be my last semester of graduate school. Wow, I can’t believe I said that.
For my last semester, I’m already signed up to finish my thesis. I also have a completely, wide-open, elective to take. My advisor has cleared the way for me to take an independant study. This puts me in the freaking awesome position of putting together an independant study for any topic in the realm of Software Engineering/Computer Science that I want. Woo-hoo!
These are the topics I am considering:
Advanced Distributed Systems: Concurrency, Threads and The role of XML in web apis such as LAMP, SOAP, etc. I know the very basics of XML and I’ve seen it implemented (in the most horrible way conceivable). I’ve never written code using much XML, and I don’t like that. I only see more xml in the future, not less, and lately, this html parsing thing has really been kicking my butt. If I don’t learn about this at school, I’ll be addressing it separately afterward. Concurrency is, I think, one of the most underestimated topics in computing today, and I’d like to take a closer look at it. I’d especially like to do some more work with a functional programming language. I did some Erlang a while ago and it has drastically changed the way I think when I’m coding.
Survey of Data Visualization: I would do a lot of writing about different topics in visualization including some history. This would include using different tools for Visualization. Aside from Processing, I’ve been working with Flash and Illustrator (freaking sweet software, that). I know there’s a javascript library for visualization. I’ve already done some nice work with visualization, but it would be great to have the type of rock solid foundation that this would give me.
Web Browser Based Software Testing: All of the testing I do is for apps that have a command line interface. I read David Burns’s, aka the Automated Tester’s, blog and tweets feeling very envious of all the fun stuff he gets to do. I’ve also never done performance testing, and would really like to take a crack at it. If I choose this topic, I would definitely roll in some study of virtualization.
At this point in time, I’m not really sure which of these three topics I’ll choose. They all address areas of technology that I feel are highly important . Whichever topic I choose, I will be blogging most of my work.
I feel grateful that the teachers in my school trust me enough and are open enough to give me this opportunity of independent study. My school, Southern Polytechnic State University, might not have the resources of a top tier school, but all of the teachers I’ve encountered have gone out of their way to help me achieve goals that I set for myself. I’m not sure I would have been given this freedom at another school. The school that allows a motivated learner to chase their dreams in a responsible way is to be commended. I’m not a “school spirit,” cheerleader-y type, but I might actually purchase a class ring this time. It would definitely be silver and have either a black or amethyst stone to match my Doc Martens and black hair.
Marlena,
If I were choosing what to write about I would either do Advanced Distributed Systems or web testing.
Advanced Distributed Systems would be good for discussing the storage implications of distributed systems and the ability to move data around. I would have a look at the comparisons between XML and JSON for moving data.
Web Testing would be good if you looked into the issues that are going to arise from the testing of HTML5 Applications against HTML4 applications. Canvas is the main one as normal tools like Selenium and Watir don’t work against canvas elements because their are no real buttons or text boxes.
Thats my 2c on the topic but I am sure you will make the correct choice for you!
All the best with your thesis!
David
Thanks for the great comment. Your remarks make me wonder if maybe their isn’t a way to combine those 2 topics into 1.
I’ll have to look into these further ;o)