Fall 05

Classes start next week. How about that?

A couple years ago, I was the TA for the local graduate parallel computing course. That was a lot of fun, though it was also a lot of work. Kathy Yelick has done a lot with performance tuning and language design for parallel machines; and I'm a numerical analyst who happens to know something about systems. So I think the folks taking the class were exposed to a pretty good range of topics, more than they might have been if (for exmple) I was the TA for my advisor.

Since the parallel computing course, I haven't been formally assigned as a TA. I've had a number of students come by my office to ask questions related to projects in numerical linear algebra, and would have probably been the TA for the numerical linear algebra course with Kahan a couple semesters ago if Jim hadn't nixed the idea (perhaps correctly). However, there is -- correctly -- a teaching requirement for graduate students in the CS PhD program; and because it was a graduate course, the parallel computing class didn't fulfill that requirement for me. So I will be teaching this coming semester, in addition to wrapping up my thesis, writing job applications, and trying to make forward progress on my research.

It looks like it will be a busy semester. And it starts next week! And I'm delighted about it. I'm sure I'll be busy, but won't it be fun? I work well when I have several distinct tasks to occupy my time: a few hours proving theorems, a few hours writing code, and a few hours scribbling notes. And yes, a few hours to eat and exercise goes in there, too. A few hours of teaching will fit nicely, I think.

The class for which I'm the TA is CS 164: Compilers and Language Design. Yes, this a somewhat peculiar assignment: if we went by background, I would probably first be assigned to teach a numerical computing course, an algorithms course, or even an operating systems course. But all the numerical computing courses at Berkeley live in the math department, and thus wouldn't fulfill my requirement; and I'm certainly sufficiently broadly qualified to be a TA for many courses in CS, including compilers. It's been a while since my undergrad course, but I do know the material -- I've even used it for my work (academic and commercial) a few times. Besides, I really like this material. The theory is elegant, accessible, and obviously and immediately practical (with the great advantage that I'm thus in a position to be able to crank out a big chunk of the class project code in one or two evenings -- maybe I'll write later about writing an LL(1) parser generator in Common Lisp). And the tradeoffs in language design often center around aesthetic issues of how things are most naturally expressed, issues that can be appreciated by almost anyone who has written a program.

There are about fifty students in the class. So I'll be responsible for two sections of about twenty-five each. With that many people, I would be very surprised if there weren't other people who took just as much joy in the subject as I do. I'd probably also be surprised if there weren't a few who turn out to be the most irritating sorts of language lawyers, but it takes all types -- and I have quite a few friends among the irritating language lawyer crowd.

Anyhow, one of the current requirements for GSIs at Berkeley is that we should take an online course on Professional Standards and Ethics for Graduate Student Instructors. So I came to the cafe to sit and work through the first module. It was, I suppose, an educational experience. But I've already decided that I have some comments for the course feedback system, once I finish the last section:

• Yes, we're not supposed to discriminate based on race, creed, sexual preference, ethnicity, hair style, eye color, shoe size, taste in music, etc. Do you have to list all those things more than once? At some point, the eye tires of lists; I don't know about other readers, but I have to force myself to actually pay any attention beyond the first item or two, and in this case I see no point in bothering. Your supposed to be teaching about teaching -- do you really think that legalese is the best language for pedagogy?
• Do not write about groups of individuals. What else would make up the groups? Garden vegetables, perhaps? You don't clarify anything with the extra words. This is supposed to be a course on pedagogy, not a course on advertising or professional business obfuscation. Let your yes be your yes, and let your group be your group! Otherwise people like me will get bees in their bonnets and run in circles crying Ow! Ow! Ow! rather than actually absorbing the rest of your sentence.
• Similarly, what's the point in writing that discrimination is the granting of preferential treatment to some but not to all? It's a bad definition. Preference implies exclusivity; the phrase to some but not to all is just so much extra verbiage. Even worse is the phrase granting of: treatment is already a noun, you know. And if you remove the excess, this sentence defines discrimination as preferential treatment, which seems to me to be a pretty obvious definition. Bah!
• Bees! Ow! Ow! Ow!

With this sort of training, I'm sure that I'll be enabled to act effectively as a more useful and pedagogically sound instrument toward student learning and fulfillment. Or maybe I'll just become a crotchety ass.

• Currently drinking: Black coffee