This website recently came to my attention: http://www.nayuki.io/

The author is a UofT graduate of Comp Sci (w/ a Math minor). They took it on themselves to translate the seemingly confusing/pointless material s/he was learning in class (and even a lot of personal interests), and turned it into a tonne of cool articles in a blog for the past five years.

Articles range from a knowledgeable outline of the Casio FX-991MS capabilities (with varying complexity for readers of any background), to much more advanced signal processing and maths discussion. There are articles discussing weird and obscure programming languages which the author either learned in extremely poorly planned classes, or else went out and learned a bit about on their own time, to write a short interesting blog --- either of those two possibilities serves to demonstrate that crappy software engineering classes or not, its the student that makes something out of the experience. Other articles discuss Canadian finance, arts, music, and writing --- all serving to demonstrate that the author is well rounded, and knowledgeable on more than just computer code.

The most important take-away is that this blogger didn't put so much effort into dissing his courses, many of which were surely impractical (not that the author admits that anywhere on the website, because that would defeat the purpose of the website). Instead, the author went a step beyond, turned it into something really cool, and now has an extraordinary representation of what they learned in school.

Okay...

UofT's Comp Sci program is far superior to our Soft Eng and Comp Sci. I read people consider it even better than Soft Eng at UofT itself, because of how it is structured. LinkedIn rates UofT at 3rd place in the top Software Schools, McMaster is 18th... that's pathetic for a school that was one of the first in Canada to offer this degree.

As far as I'm conserved Soft Eng department is ran by monkeys who don't even check the curriculum, making it a complete free for all. It is unacceptable for a field as dynamic as Software Engineering that changes every year.

Other articles discuss Canadian finance, arts, music, and writing --- all serving to demonstrate that the author is well rounded, and knowledgeable on more than just computer code.

We all have something to discuss, it's no big deal, but when I'm asked about Software at McMaster, I tell people to stay clear of it.

Hello mike! This is the first time I received a written review talking about my web site, and I want to thank you for your comments and compliments.

Since we're talking about one's time spent in university, for reference these are the courses I took: nayuki.io/page/my-university-courses . I would say about half of my articles are direct course topics that I revisited and polished, and half are original explorations or were things enabled by knowledge gained from school.

I cherish the time that I spent in university doing my bachelor's degree. When I realized I was paying $10k per year on tuition, I felt motivated to make the most of my time, take classes seriously, and as much as possible learn and retain the concepts I was being taught. This was a stark change from my high school life where I didn't care, and where I got grades ranging from D to A. However, I think that not all university courses/programs are right for me, and I can sympathize with students who find themselves disliking some courses and/or being disillusioned with the education system.

There were a couple of choices I consciously made to avoid courses I didn't like and embrace courses I preferred more. I steered clear of the software engineering program (note: UofT softeng is a CS program, not a PEO-style engineering program) because I didn't like doing group projects in a school environment. The one or two mandatory softeng courses proved my fears on this point; also I figured I would get real-world softeng experience on internships and jobs. So I filled my university time with lots and lots of theory courses, where I learned how computing concepts work at the fundamental level and how to build and verify algorithms myself. I also avoided the engineering department because of the heavy workload (30hr/wk class in Eng vs. 15 in CS), numerous design project courses, mandatory non-CS courses (chemistry calculations on paper, engineering ethics, accounting, presentations, thesis/project, etc.), and an overall curriculum that didn't really interest me.

As for the web site itself, I never gave much thought as to why I do things, but I'll try to come up with concrete reasons. I think I do it to prove to myself that I understand concepts and can build things. At the same time, I figured that there's no harm in sharing the knowledge; there's no money to be made but there is reputation to be gained. And I can use it as a portfolio when interviewing for jobs, which lets me to demonstrate my work and coding style instead of only superficially talking about unpublished work. So, I hope this response gives you some insight into my thought processes, and how my published work relates to my time spent in school.

Didn't know there was so much variation