Real-Time Programming

In the computer science faculty at the university of Waterloo, CS452 is commonly known as "the train course" because we move around trains and stuff.

I'm now just doing the first 'introductory' assignment... Boy is it hard. Having to time everything so everything runs smoothly is a real pain, and I am really grateful of operating systems that manage this kind of stuff.

Yesterday the substitute prof who taught this a couple years back said that one of the later assignments, having to deal with tracking the trains (with the limited number of sensors we have) is the most difficult assignment in all of our university career. (nondeterministic and all that..)

This course is probably by far the toughest undergrad CS course that you can take at UW. I have no idea why I'm taking 2 other CS project courses this term as well...

Anyway, been working on this for the whole night and the couple nights before that and I think one more night before that... so yeah my mind needed a little break and I thought I'd write an entry. Seems like everyone else is way ahead though, which begs the question, "How many hours do they have in a day? 40?"

So far, I've concentrated on UI mostly. Input and output stuff, efficiently displaying stuff on the WYSE terminal and everything. I probably focused a little too much on this area, because it's not really an area with a big constraint in terms of meeting the service times. I haven't tested anything in a while, written like 2000 lines of code since the last testing... Just crossing my fingers and hoping it will work when I get to the lab in a couple hours.

p.s. kgs3 is pretty nice. it's too bad wms is starting his full-time job. would have liked to see a few more major features added, since he claims it should be easier to add new features. i won't go as far as to wishing for him to get fired, but i hope he gets some free time to work on it soon :)