I have finished my Computer Science papers.
The last one was really easy. To understand why, consider the three aspects of Computing we learn in an 'A' Level syllabus.
The first field of study is Skill i.e. the craft of manipulating the (yeah you know). The Coursework paper is what tests your skill. It was challenging, but they used to have it much better, in the Computing faculty's Golden Age. If you wanted a software for constructing an artificial language, you can go ahead and do just that. If you wanted a program for rendering Julia set pictures for every month of the year, that's what they let you do too. They never induced you to manage bank accounts and libraries.
The second field of study is Rote Learning. They give you some notes and let you sort out whatever concepts and definitions you might be asked about in the paper, right after you have found a way through the language. A similar experience is to meet a Cosmonaut mechanic who has been stuck in Mir for fifteen years, repeating incessantly his daily routines and dialogues with the ship computer. In Russian, of course.
Paper I tested my Rote Learning, and it was no fun.
The third field of study is Common Sense, which made it the easiest. It is also the second most useful because it is pragmatic and applicable wherever a computer is present to fry your sanity front-to-back. It was tested today in Paper II.
All things past, I am sad that there are less and less students taking up the discipline. I suspect even that Computer Science itself has lost its heroic essence. Wherefore the spirit of those mechanics who decrypted Hitler's instructions to his generals? Wherefore the persistence and curiosity of Lorenz and Mandelbrot who threw the doors of Mathematics open to Chaos?
If machines become masters over the minds of men, those who can turn the tables, turn. Satisfy not in bank accounts, nor resign yourself to the mental freak show.
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