hey whats up?
Hey! Not much. Trying to figure out courses for next semester...
Hey, you want to know something funny. My roommate was just chatting you!
Haha, nice. I'm assuming not many people are on most of the time
Oh man, the struggle is real. I dont know exactly what my courses are going to be either?
What are you studying?
Im studying computer science with an emphasis in animation. Im loving it so far. How about you?
CS and a minor in Linguistics. I'm having a lot of fun with it. As far as animation goes, I've always tried to teach myself things like blender, but I've never been able to get into it...
sweet! Thats awesome!
Is that the kind of animation you're studying, or more two dimensional stuff?
I love blender. Thats actually where it all started with me. I love playing around and making things in 3D on the computer Im more interested in the 3D stuff. The 2D stuff is fun, but Ill be honest im not really that good at it
Seems like it'd be more interesting, in the long run, anyway
Ya, I already like it more. I started out in the animation program but found I didnt like it as much. Mainly because they were doing a lot of 2D stuff and not as much 3D What classes have you taken in the CS department already?
Is that the animation program that BYU's famous for?
Ya, thats the program. The best part about the program is that there is a computer science side and a fine arts side. They both go through the center of animation that Brigham Young University is famous for
I've seen a couple of their projects - they're pretty impressive! Here I've only taken CS 235, but I have credits from dual-enrollment that (hopefully) cover CS 224. Then I want to see if there's a challenge exam for CS 240
oh man, I hope for your sanity that you can get out of cs 224. I'm taking that one right now and its getting harder and harder by the second. Im also in CS 235 right now. What professor did you have?
Ha, right as I wrote that, the Professor evaluating my dual-credits wrote back and said no... Literally within seconds. I have Nathan Fox. He's a graduate student
Thats crazy! Sorry about that. Oh, are you taking CS 236 next semester
Yep, I'm signed up for Joseph Barker. Do you know if he's any good?
I dont yet, I have him in my cart I think. Is he the one in the marb or the talmage building
MARB 130
Oh, I actually think I have the other one in my cart. I have heard a few good things about him. The only bad part is, his class is full. Im hoping to be put high on the waiting list so that I can get into it.
Good luck! Have you had Frank Jones?
If not what section are you in?
003
Ya, I am in his CS 224 class right now.
I need 3 more credits for next semester, so...
Hes pretty good, the only thing is, he relies on you teaching yourself alot. Which is honestly not bad seems how thats what the majority of CS is anyway
That's definitely the vibe I've gotten so far
Which class are you debating
What do you mean?
oh, are you thinking of taking cs224 with him next semester
Yeah
Oh, I see. I think its a great class, but it is just extremely difficult concepts on the first introduction to it. He is pretty good though. He makes really good online videos. They have been my saving grace!
OK, that would hopefully not be too bad. How much is assembly and how much is other things?
Up to now, it hasnt been too much assembly, but we have done one lab with mainly assembly, as an introduction. Now we have a couple more labs that have mainly assembly again. Do you find assembly easy or is it challenging for you?
I love assembly.
I struggle to figure out which part is being stored as variables
Yeah, it takes some wrapping your head around how the processor/stack/heap and all works at first, but it's not bad
Hopefully as we dive more and more into it, it will get better and things will begin to make more sense
How much C or C++ do you know?
Do you have any tips that helped you when you were first learning it?
Work things out on paper if you can't keep it straight in your head.
I know more c++ than c. I did that a bit on the last lab. It really does help. I have also found that just talking things out, even when there arent people listening can help a ton
Have like a table of registers (on paper) and update it at every step and a stack and work through your algorithm Haha, yes. Talking about it is really great, although if there's no one listening you can seem nuts
oh, thats a good idea. I will probably do that on this next lab. We are doing some kind of attack lab and taking advantage of something. Honestly dont understand it yet, but after the lab I will.
Are you making a shellcode?
Thats how it has generally worked this past month or so. I generally have no clue about something and then later, after the assignment I will learn what I should have known We havent done any shellcode. Although, I think that would be cool and useful to know a little I do  a lot on linux and I always find that there are solutions to problems using shellcode. And I never know what they are talking about
Yeah, that's another thing that can help is messing around with hacking competitions, especially reading disassembly I think I mostly got into that after my Assembly class, though, so might be easier afterwards
are you in the hacking club I think we have one of those... Not sure though
I tried to join it, went once, then sent a message asking them to add me to the team for the competition and they just ignored my message in the team chat... Sort of off-putting. I'll try again maybe next semester sometime
oh shoot, it seems like you really know your stuff, thats too bad. I thought about trying going for it in the future. I think it sounds fun to be able to hack into things that are legal to hack into
Haha, yep legal is great
I think its also useful to figure out the vulnerabilities that can happen in software and how to fix them so that noone else can hack it or at least make it harder for someone to hack
That's probably the part an employer likes the best I really love just having a puzzle It sort of directly correlates how much you know with how much you can do, which is cool
Ya, those are both true. I think thats one reason why I like animation and why I plan on going into the computer science animation emphasis, is because there are always puzzles that you have to solve the only thing is there are not always answers to the puzzles. It just seems like they are open ended, which makes it better and worse in a lot of ways
That's true, too... Sometimes after hours of trying to fix/figure out a project, be it coding or whatever else, your brain's just fried
Ya, what languages do you know? Do you do web at all?
I just started dabbling in web a bit ago with HTML/CSS/Python (back end/front end), and it's nice, but I mainly lean towards applications/systems stuff I use C++ (favorite, definitely), Golang, Python, Assembly, Javascript, and a few others, pretty much in that order I've got to go, but I hope you have a good night! Bye!