Seminars

We will have five seminar sessions during the course. The seminars are not compulsory but you're of course encouraged to follow them. In order to join a seminar you should however prepared properly and solved the assignment that is associated to the seminar.

Work in a group

You could, and it is often productive to do so, work in a group when you work with an assignment. However, working in a group can also give you the impression that you know something when in fact you would never be able to solve the problem by yourself. Do not be lured into the false reassurance of being able to explain a given solution, this is not the same thing as being able to solve a problem.

A report

One way of learning a new subject is to write about it. You might think you know something until you try to explain it to others. As a learning process you should therefore write a small report where you describe the problem, how you have solved it and problems that you faced. A report is not one page of source code but three to four pages where you explain the problem and its solution.

Since you should soon write a thesis it's about time that you start using something better then Word. You should therefore use LaTex when you prepare the report and you chould use the following template:

• LaTex-template

If you're running Linux you could install TeX Live and generate a report by using pdflatex. For Windows user there is TeXLive and Miktex and Mac users can use MacTeX. There are also cloud base solutions such as Overlef.

• TexLive
• MacTex
• Miktex
• Overleaf

Do install the system of your choice an learn how to use it well before the first seminar.

The assignments

The assignments will hopefully give you some inspiration to go further and extend the solution that you have. Maybe you can easily write a program that solves the assignment but can you write a more efficient or beautiful solution - there are too many programmers in the world that can produce the boring solutions, you should not be one of them.

Assistance

Before every seminar there is time set of where teaching assistants will help you with the assignments. They will of course not give you the solutions but they have enough experience of Erlang programming so that they will see the bugs in you code in 5 minutes rather than 50 minutes. Also use them for ideas in how to extend the solutions or discuss pros and cons of different strategies. 

The seminars

At the seminars you should bring you report in paper and your laptop. We will often extend the solution or try an experiment during the seminars so be prepared to do some coding.