I am by far the fastest typist in my group of friends. This is undoubtedly due to years of abuse as a programmer, and I'm sure I'll end up with bionic wrist transplants some day, but for now it's a handy skill. As a result of this, I often give away my notes to my friends, because I sometimes get something down that the others miss.
What I hadn't realized was how much my years of programming have seeped into my notetaking. Here are some lines from my notes, and the English language translations:
Possession != title Possession does not equal title.
Actual deliv. == manual deliv. Actual delivery is equivalent to manual delivery.
Maj -> Recklessness == Crim Negligence++; Recklessess is enhanced criminal negligence according to the majority rule.
And yes, in that line, I did put a semicolon in my notes, and it bothered me that there was a space between the Crim and the Negligence. Old habits die hard.
I've also realized that if the professor writes = up on the board for a comparison test, I always write == in my notes. I'm constitutionally unable to write 'Recklessness = Criminal Negligence' for something that's not an assignment of value.
This has resulted in a quickie crash course in C semantics for my friends.
I will declare victory when I see a != on one of their outlines.
6 comments:
muahahahaha... I take notes like that all the time. After nine years working as programmer, old habits do indeed die hard. Its ever so funny handing K&R to your friends and telling them to read it to decipher your notes. You know its gone too far when your notes look like:
if (state groud == adequate && state ground == independent)
!supreme court review
Cheers,
Chris
http://www.cogitatio.net/blog/
*laugh* My outlines have outright pseudo-code as well. :)
When I've been procrastinating, I've toyed around with the idea of writing homicide charges as a program.
//MPC
if (actus_reus == caused_death_of_another) {
if (mens_rea == purposely || mens_rea == knowingly) {
homicide = intentional_killing; }
etc. }
Then, of course, I realize that would be very silly. But wouldn't it be cool?
I tell ya what though, for some reason (maybe the 18000+ hours I have spent coding.. heh) when I see pseudo code like what you posted I "get it" instantly. Conversely, I find that If I can condense a series of actions/qualifications down to pseudo code, then I have really understood the material. Heh, when I am finished with school, maybe I'll gather all my notes and write the "grand program" that is law school education :)
I agree. If I can reduce a concept to a few lines of pseudocode, I clearly understand the concept.
I realized when I took the practice midterms that while I have a good memory for the details, I need to make sure my conception of the important points of the course as a whole is more solid. To that end, I've started writing up single-page descriptions of the entire course.
I think the point is to reduce, reduce, reduce. Pseudocode is good for that.
I don't suppose either of you habitual nerds took symbolic logic in school. SL is all about converting arguments into a formal language and then applying the rules of logic to prove or disprove the validity argument. Very useful stuff - in a nerdy sort of way.
Gah. I'd suppressed my memories of that course. Had a horrible, horrible teacher.
Evil teacher aside, I agree the concepts are useful, especially for something like law school. Here you do want to reduce the concepts to essentially symbolic relationships for the exams.
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