Edited by David Pennington, Friday, 15 Jan 2016, 17:40
I last studied with the OU back in 1980 so all of my previous credits are from that time. I have an original E student code - which amazingly I still remember. Due to Student Loan requirements, I am unable (as explained later - also unwilling) to take the two required prerequisites for the course I have signed up for. This course is TM351 Data management and analysis.
I studied computer subjects back in the 1970s previous to the advent of micro-computers but was prepared for them when they finally arrived around 1978. At the time I was a Foreign Exchange Dealer in the City and, up to them, had assumed that the OU course was a side show and not relevant to my daytime occupation. Having attended a one week summer school at Reading University for my T101 Mathematics course, I returned with a program to do some elementary calculations on Money Market problems. My boss liked what I had done and arranged for me to obtain one of the first Z80 micro-computers to design a suite of programs for the dealing room. This was a North Star Horizon. This, along with an Elbit VDU was used to build a good suite of software. The bank, eventually, bought an Horizon for me to have at home.
I moved jobs and arranged to keep the Horizon. From there I wrote a whole package of front office software for the bank - including a package for our branch in Greece - built in Microsoft Basic on an Apple II. Eventually, I left the City and formed my own software company - in 1985. For the next 20 years I spent my time developing software in the Smalltalk programming language. Smalltalk is the original Object Oriented language - designed at Xerox PARC in the mid-1970s.
Consequently, I saw no reason for me to study OO programming using Java (which was one of the prerequisites) as I was already very competent in this field. After me writing a CV and obtaining a reference from an insurance company in Connecticut, USA (I had been writing custom software for them for the last 20 years!) the course team agreed that I had sufficient background to take the course without the prereqs.
I will still need to get up to speed with Python. To assist this, I am currently working on the Future Learn three week course - “Learn to Code for Data Analysis” which uses Python to analyse spreadsheet data. Once this is complete, I have designed a few projects to fully understand Python - one of which is to convert my existing Smalltalk web program (using Seaside) which tests vocabulary knowledge for those learning Latin!
So. Onwards. More on the Data Analysis course and Python next time.
Back to the OU after 35 years!
I last studied with the OU back in 1980 so all of my previous credits are from that time. I have an original E student code - which amazingly I still remember. Due to Student Loan requirements, I am unable (as explained later - also unwilling) to take the two required prerequisites for the course I have signed up for. This course is TM351 Data management and analysis.
I studied computer subjects back in the 1970s previous to the advent of micro-computers but was prepared for them when they finally arrived around 1978. At the time I was a Foreign Exchange Dealer in the City and, up to them, had assumed that the OU course was a side show and not relevant to my daytime occupation. Having attended a one week summer school at Reading University for my T101 Mathematics course, I returned with a program to do some elementary calculations on Money Market problems. My boss liked what I had done and arranged for me to obtain one of the first Z80 micro-computers to design a suite of programs for the dealing room. This was a North Star Horizon. This, along with an Elbit VDU was used to build a good suite of software. The bank, eventually, bought an Horizon for me to have at home.
I moved jobs and arranged to keep the Horizon. From there I wrote a whole package of front office software for the bank - including a package for our branch in Greece - built in Microsoft Basic on an Apple II. Eventually, I left the City and formed my own software company - in 1985. For the next 20 years I spent my time developing software in the Smalltalk programming language. Smalltalk is the original Object Oriented language - designed at Xerox PARC in the mid-1970s.
Consequently, I saw no reason for me to study OO programming using Java (which was one of the prerequisites) as I was already very competent in this field. After me writing a CV and obtaining a reference from an insurance company in Connecticut, USA (I had been writing custom software for them for the last 20 years!) the course team agreed that I had sufficient background to take the course without the prereqs.
I will still need to get up to speed with Python. To assist this, I am currently working on the Future Learn three week course - “Learn to Code for Data Analysis” which uses Python to analyse spreadsheet data. Once this is complete, I have designed a few projects to fully understand Python - one of which is to convert my existing Smalltalk web program (using Seaside) which tests vocabulary knowledge for those learning Latin!
So. Onwards. More on the Data Analysis course and Python next time.