Intro
Hey, I'm Rob, your 154 instructor!
I recently graduated from UW with my PhD! I been here since undergrad, so if you ever have questions about any stage of life at UW I'm happy to talk through them. Now that I'm finally done with school I'm gearing up to...go back to school. :) I'll be teaching something every quarter at UW this coming year.
Fun fact: I had done zero programming until I took the 14X intro series. Everyone is at their own stage in the process of learning to code, and it's a process that never finishes. You don't need to feel pressure that you're "falling behind" anyone else.
154 was one of my favorite classes back when I took it over ten years (ugh) ago and I'm very excited to return as an instructor for it now.
Teaching
This is my second time teaching a full course, but I've TAd many courses as well. Some subjects I've taught:
- Data Structures
- AI
- Databases
- Serious Games
- BASH/Linux
I've also held several summer coding camps and done a ton of outreach work. One of my favorite parts of teaching is interacting one-on-one with students so I look forward to getting to know you in office hours, even if we won't be able to meet in-person this quarter.
Research
My thesis topic was about studying the effects of dyslexia in children learning code. We talk about accessibility in this class, but the study of learning disabilities and coding is still very new and largely unknown. My own work was still exploratory, but the good news is I didn't see widespread evidence that dyslexia is a huge barrier for programmers. If you happen to have a learning disability I'd be very interested to hear your personal experience on how it may affect your programming!
In the past I've also studied instructional technology for children with learning disabilities, problem solving, serious games, city simulation, and neutrino physics. Conducting research can be very different from learning in a class, but it's an exhilarating feeling to realize you've run out of existig knowledge on a topic and now have to make new knowledge yourself.
For Fun
What do I do for fun? Lots of indoor activities these days, just like everyone else
Cooking
I love to cook! Last year I decided to learn how to bake bread. This year I'm focusing a little more on cooking theory with books like Salt Fat Acid Heat and The Food Lab.
Games
I just finished the FFVII remake and am contemplating picking up Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I'm also playing neat smaller games off of itch.io like Sagebrush and Anodyne.
Drawing
Even though I'm not good at it yet, I've been trying to learn to draw this year as well.