I'm learning German. I've never learnt a non-machine language before and having just moved to Berlin I thought I'd try not being that jerk foreigner that only speaks english, even after living here for 2 years. So far it's been quite fun. Last week I finally cracked the level where I understood a conversation of a Couple passing me on the street.
So far no. I've been using Duo Lingo, which has been surprisingly good to get the basics, plus a bunch of learn German audio files I found. I'll probably sign up for classes soon when I find some good ones. A friend of mine took classes aimed at tourists and said she didn't get much from it.
An old bilingual hacker mate once commented to me, on learning German, that it's a stack based languages, as all the verbs are at the end of the sentence...
I've been taking chemistry courses, online, with some labs in person. Oregon State ($$) and Coursera. I've finished general chemistry, took a little analytic, and now I'm making my way through an organic chemistry sequence.
Although I already have my finance degree and wouldn't so much need it, getting my CFA is a near-term goal.
Learning wise, trying to completely re-learn mathematics, starting with books like the Mathematicians Delight and beginning with the most basic arithmetic, hopefully up through diffy q's, linear algebra, and intermediate stat. If anybody has any good tips on completely teaching yourself math from start to finish, please send them my way!
Good luck with the CFA! It's a great program. I didn't expect it at first, but the best lesson I got out of it was that it taught me how to study and teach myself a subject comprehensively.
That's awesome! I hope to go through that course soon. I just finished 2nd week assignments of Algorithms- Design and Analysis on Coursera - https://www.coursera.org/course/algo
UML. Technically this is for a master's, but that's my spare time. I do find it interesting to see why it's not really used. So verbose, but not detailed enough for great communication.
UML - I know next to nothing about UML - but what I do know is the language was invented first and then people came around and tried to give semantics to the language. Well, in other words what that means is that the language was invented first and it really didn't mean anything. And then, later on, people came around to try to figure out what it meant. Well, that's not the way to design a specification language. The importance of a specification language is to specify something precisely, and therefore what you write - the specification you write - has to have a precise, rigorous meaning. - Leslie Lamport
UML: a language that was invented first and then people came around to try to get semantics. - Leslie Lamport
UML: fuzzy pictures of boxes and arrows. - Leslie Lamport
People use UML, things like UML, to model programs, but it's not clear how to translate them in to sequences of states, for concurrency. If you cannot translate them in to sequences of states, it means you don't understand them, and it may mean that there's nothing there. You know, there are lots of people selling snake-oil, drawing boxes and arrows that make you feel good, but ultimately have no real meaning. If something is really meaningful you should be able to express it in mathematics. - Leslie Lamport
... ie. it's not used much because it lacks precision of expression, and its main competitor is informal diagramming: a couple of boxes and a line on a whiteboard are 90% as effective as UML, and actually function for a general audience. (Quotes from https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)
Not really in my spare time since I took a couple months off from working (have to go pound the pavement this month,) but machine learning (UofW Coursera's specialization) & pandas. Also, spending time in the mornings on math (currently probability.)
I'm digging into Android Wear and writing an app. It's nice but it needs a lot of boilerplate code to set up communication between mobile and wear. Once set up and understood it's pretty straightforward
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadOh, and how to consume large amounts of ethanol without it tasting like anything. That's mostly a weekend project with a couple of mates.
In addition to the classes, I've been trying to use it to write small programs and whatnot.
While I can't use Haskell at work, I can say working with it more regularly has definitely improved the JavaScript code I write on the job.
Did you take classes?
Learning wise, trying to completely re-learn mathematics, starting with books like the Mathematicians Delight and beginning with the most basic arithmetic, hopefully up through diffy q's, linear algebra, and intermediate stat. If anybody has any good tips on completely teaching yourself math from start to finish, please send them my way!
Close.io has been really useful.
UML - I know next to nothing about UML - but what I do know is the language was invented first and then people came around and tried to give semantics to the language. Well, in other words what that means is that the language was invented first and it really didn't mean anything. And then, later on, people came around to try to figure out what it meant. Well, that's not the way to design a specification language. The importance of a specification language is to specify something precisely, and therefore what you write - the specification you write - has to have a precise, rigorous meaning. - Leslie Lamport
UML: a language that was invented first and then people came around to try to get semantics. - Leslie Lamport
UML: fuzzy pictures of boxes and arrows. - Leslie Lamport
People use UML, things like UML, to model programs, but it's not clear how to translate them in to sequences of states, for concurrency. If you cannot translate them in to sequences of states, it means you don't understand them, and it may mean that there's nothing there. You know, there are lots of people selling snake-oil, drawing boxes and arrows that make you feel good, but ultimately have no real meaning. If something is really meaningful you should be able to express it in mathematics. - Leslie Lamport
... ie. it's not used much because it lacks precision of expression, and its main competitor is informal diagramming: a couple of boxes and a line on a whiteboard are 90% as effective as UML, and actually function for a general audience. (Quotes from https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup)