frutti.gummi

At first I was quite pleased that most of the courses here doesn't require writing programs. I wasn't sure if I could still write anything in C++/Java. However, having experienced the tedious process of writing papers, I'd rather write programs now. You can just start writing the program and it either work or it doesn't. So you know whether you are doing it right. But with papers, you gotta read tons of materials written by other people first and then decide which of these papers are useful for your paper. Still, you can't be sure whether you're on the right track especially when you're not sure what exactly needs to be written. I'm in that situation with my seminar paper now. It took me days to write the "table of contents", basically a detailed outline of my paper. Furthermore, over the weekend, we had a writing assignment in pairs to write about Douglas Engelbart, the person who "invented" the computer/web as we know it today. It's already difficult to write in pairs and yet we are also graded for writing style! I forgot most of what I learnt in English 101 and 102.

If you're interested in Engelbart's work, check this out. You'll be amazed what he had built in 1968 and some of the nice features in his system are still not available in ours today.
Video:The Mother of All Demos
Article:Engelbart talks about his demo