Software Foundations Study Group
I have wanted to work through the Software Foundations series of books for many years, but it has been very difficult to find time to do so. I finally started on July 3rd. Between family and work, I have little “computer time” to pursue such endeavors, but I am determined to make at least some progress every day. Some friends expressed interest in joining me, and we started an asynchronous study group!
The study group communicates via a private GitHub repository. Here is a quote from the Preface of Logical Foundations that explains why we made the repository private:
Please do not post solutions to the exercises in a public place. Software Foundations is widely used both for self-study and for university courses. Having solutions easily available makes it much less useful for courses, which typically have graded homework assignments. We especially request that readers not post solutions to the exercises anyplace where they can be found by search engines.
Public GitHub repositories can be searched very easily. Simply search
for a filename with site:github.com in Google to find the
many people who did not respect the above request.
The study group has grown to five members so far. We post our solutions in the repository, making it easy to review one another’s solutions and learn from each other. We use GitHub Discussions to ask questions and discuss particular topics. It is working pretty well!
I am currently attempting to solve every exercise. I have been able to solve every exercise without assistance so far, but the exercise that I am currently struggling with may break that streak. I will create a new discussion if I am unable to make progress within the next few days. One study group member who is further along reports that some exercises that I have not yet reached have a low benefit to cost (time) ratio, so he gave up on doing every exercise. I am happy to hear his experience so that I can more easily make the same decision when the time comes.
By the way, using every spare minute to work on exercises is the primary reason why my blog has received little love lately.