academia

I've had the pleasure of taking a few noteworthy classes that deserve a special spot on this site. Those classes and my thoughts on them are found here :)

evolutionary computation (cap5512)

For starters, I absolutely *abhor* biology and could never imagine myself taking another biology class again. So needless to say, I had no idea what possessed me when I registered for this class. However in hindsight, this was one of the coolest classes I have ever taken.

Evolutionary computation covers algorithms (namely genetic algorithms) that are built for optimization problems using the principles of evolutionary biology. Essentially, a "population" of candidate solutions to the problem is presented and evaluated on a fitness or objective function. The fittest of solutions are then selected to reproduce to create new solutions, which are then used as the population for the next generation. This is a very oversimplified version of the framework of such algorithms, and it is very common to modify this framework to best suit the problem at hand.

software engineering (cen5016)

As an aspiring software engineer, it is only sensible to take the course titled as such. UCF offers a intro-like software development course that covers the basics of the engineering process. This course goes deeper into the processes and frameworks that allow software teams to produce high quality products and services.

In it, we go over the Agile methodology, static and dynamic analysis, ethics, LLMs in SWE, open source, security + privacy, and the list goes on. The course is taught by Dr. Kevin Moran who is a software engineering researcher.