Fort
by phill
Continuing the nerd
theme of the last post, I’ve just completed another Thursday afternoon session of ‘Nerd Club ‘. It’s certainly not as cool as Fight Club, having nothing to do with soap or plans to destroy global economies. Instead, we–that is, three PhD students, two post-docs, and a partridge in a pear tree research fellow–deal with code. The way that chemistry and physics degrees are structured means that there is very little in the way of programming learned during undergrad. My course especially wasn’t designed with computer programming in mind, what with having to fit in equal measures of physics and chemistry and maths. I did take one programming unit in third year and it was probably one of the highlights of my education. There’s a common joy inherent in both coding and creative writing where you have been staring at a screen full of characters, frustrated by a block, and suddenly it turns into something clear and beautiful and you are able to proceed. I think it’s this frustration/reward system that keeps people passionate.
So yes, Nerd Club. We are programming in the language of Fortran, which is abbreviated from ‘Formula Translation’ and has been around for twice as long as I have. It’s a very powerful and fast language, and I’m enjoying the challenges that our tutor of the moment, Paolo, is putting us through. It’s a pretty great thing for him to do actually. He’s got a lot of his own things going on at the moment, but he still takes the time out to teach us for three hours or so on a Thursday afternoon. I can think of a few other members of faculty that could learn from his selflessness.
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