I defended my diploma. Theme: "A spell checking module for Iradi in Latin script for OpenOffice". It knows 41,000 words and it does not know swear words, the commission laughed at that. Mark: excellent!
Thank you to my supervisor, and to my mother who made me 1,000 cups of tea.
We rehearsed the diploma defence in front of the supervisor. Ten minutes for a talk. I used eleven and a half. She wrote on my sheet "FASTER" and underlined it three times.
The best question from the rehearsal: "And what will your program do when someone writes a word that does not exist?" My answer: "Offer them a similar one." She said: "That is also the answer to many things in life."
The diploma project is a spell checker for Iradi in Latin script. The program is easy. The words are the problem. Where do you find a list of 41,000 correct Iradi words?
My answer: three places. The library's old dictionary (with a coffee stain on page 214), the archive of the Talas Herald (which uses every word and spells half of them in a new way), and my grandmother, who knows all the old words and corrects me every time I use the new ones.
The program now knows "kuyrukchu", "chaikana" and "jaanyshyp". It does not yet know "bekzhan", which is a problem for the blog.
Third year. Our group list, printed on the wall: 17 names. I read it twice, the way you read a list from a different year. The lab has new computers (not Pentium II, something with a flat monitor) and the punched-card teacher is teaching "networks" this term. He says the network is a lot like a card catalogue, only faster and more rude.
University opened again today. Our group: 24 people in 2005, 17 today. Some left for Almaty, some for Russia. The Pentium IIs are gone from the lab (nobody knows where) but the punched-card teacher is still there.
Kuble Soft has closed. The office is empty, there is a paper on the door. I am sad about it more than I expected.
Exams again. In the hall the radiators were off for three days "for repair" and 24 students wrote the analysis exam in coats and gloves. I wrote with my right hand and warmed my left under my arm.
Result: 4. I think the teacher gave me a mark for courage.
Pascal is over. Now it is C. The teacher says C is "a sharp knife" and that "a beginner will cut himself". I cut myself on the first day (a missing semicolon) and spent two hours.
The group is 23 now, one boy went to work at his uncle's shop. The six girls are all still here and they all have better marks than the boys. Facts.
All exams passed. Linear algebra: 4. Pascal: 5. History of Irad: 5 (my grandmother was my consultant). English: 5. Mathematical analysis: 3, but a good three, a three with character.
Now we have two weeks of holidays and I will do nothing. Specifically: I will do the Köch disk, again.
After five weeks of Pascal I wrote a program that does something real: you give it a date and it tells you the day of the week. I tested it on my birthday (Tuesday), my mother's birthday (Sunday), and Irad Day 1992 (Wednesday).
The teacher with the punched cards looked at the printout for a long time and said: "In my time this took a week." Then he gave me a 4. A 4! For the date of Irad Day.
So the first week at the university is over. The main building is very big, I got lost twice. Our group is 24 people, 6 girls.
The computer lab has 15 computers, Pentium II, and two of them don't turn on. We will learn Pascal first, then C. The teacher says "in my time we wrote programs on punched cards and you complain". OK, teacher.
Best thing: the library has internet! But there is a queue and you can only stay 30 minutes.