Foreseeing The CS Journey

Capstone Blog Post #3

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Fall 2024 almost complete. One third of the year until graduation almost done. I learned a lots during this quarter, but just like I do any other quarter. Thankful and eager is how I feel, and not just because we’re following up Thanksgiving and the New Year is around the corner, obviously. It’s a feeling that comes around week 10, alongside a blistering pain and rush to complete final projects, study for final exams, and emailing teachers to regard missing grades. With all jokes aside, this term was no easier than the rest, and alike others, there was a lot to learn from. Completing these classes seem step of maturity, a step of gained knowledge, and a step of pride.

For each class specifically, let’s start with the Senior Capstone project, shall we. This class containing the most exciting workload, gives me a strong sight of what I would enjoy doing after graduation. That is a mix of technology and music. Our Top-N Music Genre Classification Neural Network Project is going along well, and it definitely a project that brings me excitement and joy to work on. Students introduced to comp sci and software development here this often, but when it comes to figuring out where to start and what projects to make, start on something you would enjoy building that relates to you. This senior project comes close to following these wise CS words.

The almighty Operating Systems class is no easy task for comp sci students. Although it might be “one” of the hardest required classes for OSU’s CS bachelor program, I do think it is a necessary class amongst others. Similarly to Assembly Language and Computer Architecture, Operating Systems is an abstraction from all computer hardware, allowing any software programmer to complete any task at hand. Exciting!

Open-Source Software was also a neat class. Different from the previous two, it gave us students a peak into real world programming. Licensing was a big discussion in the topic of legality when it comes to open-source software. We were also encouraged to dive into different OSS communities, given that our final assignment was to make a push request to a large coding project with a supportive and active community.

I am quite excited for next quarter, and maybe or maybe not more excited for the Winter Break that follows this next week. Either way, I look forward to writing another blog post to state my progression through this journey.

Capstone Blog Post #2

A door to many opportunities

Neural Networks have become the hot new buzzword for machine learning. Novel to the world of Computer Science and the AI consumer industry, the talk of machine learning has been turning heads recently. Giving computers the ability to learn is bewildering useful beyond our own comprehension. But will the implementation of computers with the ability to “learn” take over jobs? Perhaps, our lives? Well, let’s not get too far ahead and focus on the small fun projects where we can utilize machine learning and neural networks.

My capstone project: Top-n Music Genre Classification Neural Network – The name says it all. A project that will classify a number (n) music genre using a neural network. Who needs such a thing? Well, if you are not an avid music listener, this might not even nudge you interest. But to those who appreciated being able to categorize their music playlists on Spotify, this might be for you. Big music streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, etc. are leaning into machine learning in order to give users the best listening experience possible. This means if you play a song, similar songs will continue to play automatically. This means while you sip hot cider during the morning of Christmas, opening gifts from loved ones while listening to Mariah Carey, Metallica won’t be on queue waiting to turn your children into a bunch of metal-heads. Although, that wouldn’t be the worst Christmas present, would it?

Explaining how a neural network is complicated, in-fact if you want to learn right now, then go do a few google searches or maybe watch a couple of Stanford’s CS231 lectures. But here is a brief description of how it works. A neural network is like a Blackbox function, no one really can know what is happening. Given lots and lots of data however, through multiple layers where each layer consists of many neurons, input information is essentially processed, changing the weight and biases of these neurons based on the expected output of the neural network. In our case, thousands of song samples are input along with their expected genre target. The neural network performs computations on this data, to then be able to predict its next music sample once trained.

For now, I will not go into further detail to serve two purposes. One, to save you from a headache. Two, to demonstrate the learning of my experience creating a neural network for this project. In the next blog post, expect a more detailed rundown of the process of creating the neural network for this genre classification project. Our capstone project group has submitted our design draft. There has not been, yet any prototyping done yet, so stay tuned.

Capstone Blog Post #1

Foresee Nothing in Your Journey

This blog is a small capture of my journey – my CS journey. A journey consists of your past, present, and future. Everyone knows their past and lives in the present. Personally speaking, how will I ever know what’s ahead of my life? The answer is I won’t know, but you can! Sort of. I lack the abilities to foresee my future. But I can do the opposite by jotting down these experiences, with the ability of sharing it with you. I invite you to this journey of mine where I will share my present-time experiences, interests, struggles, and successes. Take what you will and leave what you must. 

Becoming a senior at OSU with just one more year left, it still feels like I am just getting started. I have created a variety of projects, solidifying my learning and the ability to practice the things I have learned. Working a non-CS related job right now, I am hoping to better define my expertise’, after completing this Capstone project, along with various side projects I plan to make this last year. While I am not quite set on what I want to do after I graduate, nor can I tell someone my future job, I hope to continue to work on projects I enjoy which can funnel me to work and grow after graduating.

Through the coursework there have been plenty of projects I have enjoyed working on. In CS340, a partner and I created a full-stack application that allowed for administrative database CRUD operations. We learned about SQL and normalizing databases in this class, while having to extend our research outside of class to make the whole app work, Flask for example. I enjoyed this creating this project largely because it is an application found commonly in businesses over the web. It was very practical.

I want my capstone project to be practical. Not to say I don’t enjoy theoretical research and learning, diving into a career with projects that are practical seem more promising. My top choice for the Capstone project is the Cloud-Based Algorithmic Trading Strategies for Individual Investors. It is practical as it suggests certain trading strategies in the stock market. I myself enjoy in investing, and perhaps myself and others can use it to help our investing.