Difference between revisions of "User talk:Dondi"

Revision as of 01:50, 5 September 2017

Hi Dr. Dionisio, I noticed that you minored in music! What is your favorite type of music and what instrument(s) do you play? Emmatyrnauer (talk) 20:41, 31 August 2017 (PDT)

The first question is hard to answer—I like all kinds of music! Classical, pop, rock, show tunes, electronic, jazz—at any given moment, I can be in the mood for any one of them. I guess I have a soft spot for early jazz and big band, because I like to dance to those. But really I have favorites across the board.

As for instruments, I mostly dabble, and can probably handle piano and guitar the most (no mastery, just some chords and rhythm).

—Dondi (talk) 00:25, 2 September 2017 (PDT)

Hello Dr. Dionisio, you mentioned how your loved for computers started with gaming. What was your favorite old-school video game? Zvanysse (talk) 00:37, 1 September 2017 (PDT)

How old school do you want to go? 😅 I’ve had a few phases even in old-school times, but most of the time I gravitated toward role-playing games; way way back I was captivated by Wizardry (Sir-Tech). A little later I moved to The Bard’s Tale then to the Baldurs Gate series. In between, I also took to the early real-time strategy games like Warcraft (the original series, not WoW) and StarCraft. First-person shooters didn’t hold my attention for very long, but I got deepest in with Bungie’s Marathon series.

Um, I better stop…

—Dondi (talk) 00:25, 2 September 2017 (PDT)

Hi Dr. Dioniso, I see you studied mainly computer science in college. Did you ever have an interest in biology before teaching this course? Mbalducc (talk) 14:28, 1 September 2017 (PDT)

I have always liked the sciences in general, but admittedly most of my exposure to biology has been due to my collaboration with Dr. Dahlquist. Before coming to LMU, I did some work in medical informatics at UCLA, so that was the closest prior background before bioinformatics.

—Dondi (talk) 00:25, 2 September 2017 (PDT)

Hey Dondi! What was the first computer language that you learned when you started studying computer science? Also what languages do you enjoy most, or find yourself using most, nowadays? Qlanners (talk) 11:25, 2 September 2017 (PDT)

My first programming language—as is the case for many in my age bracket—was BASIC. Yes that is an acronym! I learned this over summer in sixth grade, and one might say the rest is history. Something that appealed to me greatly about BASIC was that it was built in to most personal computers at the time; without needing to install anything new, you can type a BASIC command directly into the command line (which was the only interface available back then) and run some code right away.

The closest equivalent to that today is JavaScript, because it is present in every web browser today, and web browsers are pretty ubiquitous. You just need to press the correct key on the browser to get JavaScript to show up 🙂 But once you’re there, I get a lot of the same feeling that I used to get with BASIC.

Which I guess leads me to your second question—these days (not for the similarity to BASIC, but because it’s what web browsers run every day), JavaScript is perhaps my most frequently-used language. Python is a close second. Slightly further back is Java, which, despite the name, is actually quite different from JavaScript. Though not exactly the same kind of “language,” I also frequently write HTML, CSS, and SQL. For my upcoming sabbatical, I anticipate that I’ll get some good exposure to Swift. The learning never ends!

—Dondi (talk) 12:33, 2 September 2017 (PDT)

Hey Dondi! I wanted to ask you what your favorite part of computer science is. I noticed you started coding when you were in sixth grade. What appealed to you then and what still appeals to you now? Simonwro120 (talk) 16:49, 3 September 2017 (PDT)

I’ve always gravitated, and continue to gravitate, to anything in computer science that has a visual aspect. So for example it isn’t surprising that the courses I teach most often are Interaction Design and Computer Graphics. In that sense I haven’t really changed from early on, although I’ve certainly learned a lot more!

—Dondi (talk) 10:57, 4 September 2017 (PDT)

Hi Dondi! What is one thing you think every computer scientist should learn and/or know by the time they leave school to work out in the "real world"? Bhamilton18 (talk) 13:13, 4 September 2017 (PDT)

Arg, I’d love to say everything but I realize that’s kind of a non-answer. Let me answer in this way: there’s theory, and there’s practice. In the theory area, I think the one thing to take away is data structures and algorithms—what they are and how they are related. This underlies every other computer science endeavor.

However, you also talked about the real world, and because of that, I also can’t ignore practice. For that, I think a computer science graduate should definitely have a level of proficiency with just hands-on, head-down programming. People will not appreciate your theoretical knowledge unless you can put it to demonstrable use, and that is by writing code. It doesn’t matter what language (because that will change over time anyway)—just be proficient at something.

So I know you said one thing but in the end I couldn't really separate the two. Hope that’s OK.

—Dondi (talk) 15:29, 4 September 2017 (PDT)

Hello Dondi! I was wondering what is it like to work a for a technology company such as Friendbuy while working as a university professor. Is it difficult to manage several projects like that simultaneously? Johnllopez616 (talk) 16:02, 4 September 2017 (PDT)

Hi Dr. Dionisio! My question for you is what got you into teaching computer science? Did you always know you wanted to teach? Cwong34 (talk) 16:52, 4 September 2017 (PDT)

Hello Dr. Dionisio, straying away from asking about computer science, what do you enjoy doing outside of LMU academics and video games? Though I've been here for three years, what would you suggest to someone who hasn't been to the LA area before? Aporras1 (talk) 18:03, 4 September 2017 (PDT)

Hey Dondi! Are you currently hooked on any video games? If so, where did you hear about it and what game is it? Ebachour (talk) 18:50, 4 September 2017 (PDT)