Got a call from somebody in the advisor's office at JHU this afternoon. Seems that they were concerned about my blatent disregard for prerequisites in the two classes I signed up for. Jeez, I thought these people were in it for the money; what's the problem?
In the case of the first course, I think the fact that I work on programs that have in the tens of thousands of lines of Java code probably qualifies as "significant Java experience," don't you? This aside from the fact that the course listed as a prereq covers a smallish subset of the concepts I actively deal with in that aforementioned Java code on a day to day basis. At one point in the conversation I was almost tempted to offer, with the appropriate level of vitriol, that my boss write me a note excusing me from having to take the silly lower level class.
In the case of the second course, the prerequisite was the ever popular 'Object-Oriented Analysis and Design'. Well, let's see... Hey! There's a course with almost that exact name on my undergraduate transcript! Do you think that maybe, just maybe, I already know how to do this stuff? Nah. And clearly the large Java programs I mentioned that I'm responsible for earlier were created completely without using OO methodolodies. It's not like Java is an OO language or anything. I might have mentioned the fact that I was a large contributor to the OO (re)design of several components of a major FAA system (including formal UML documents and the like), but I was interrupted. You see, I haven't had the AI course yet, either. Well, that's on the mark. There's just one problem -- AI isn't a prerequisite for this class. AI concepts aren't mentioned in the description for the class. But it is called 'Knowledge Engineering and Cognitive Modeling Structure', so I think there's a pretty good chance that the cognitive science course listed on my transcript would give me plenty of background. Just maybe.
Ultimately they relented, informing me that "to be forewarned is to be forearmed." Really? Thanks for your deep insight. Because I'm some doddering ignoramus who's too stupid to realize his own abilities and limitations. *sigh* Man, I really miss the way Tech did things -- online registration and no such thing as prerequisites.
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