high school python classes

[Kevin D. Clark]

Lloyd Kvam writes:

>       * Public Key Encryption

I took a class at UNH when I was a high-school senior (wooly mammoths
were still wandering around campus back then...).  It was a class with a
topic of number theory.  I liked all of the math proofs in the class
-- very cool stuff.  I really wasn't prepared for the class but I did
the best that I could.

As I sat in these classes on Saturday mornings, it did occur to me
that a lot of this stuff was pretty dry.  I couldn't see the point of
the mathematical excercises that we were going through ("why on Earth
do I care if two numbers are 'relatively prime'?", I mused).  I
couldn't fathom how any of this stuff could be used in the Real World.

Everything that I thought about these Saturday morning classes changed
during the last class.  We had a guest lecturer that day -- a
professor named David Burton.  He came into the classroom with a
twinkle in his eye and told us that he was going to teach us some
interesting things that morning.  In the next two hours he taught us
the basics of symmetric key cryptography, and then he moved onto DH
key-exchange and public-key crypto.  He built on all of the concepts
that we had learned in previous classes.  I took notes like crazy that
morning -- this really was some interesting stuff that this Professor
Burton was teaching us.  Wow....


Anyways, I look back upon that morning (eons ago) pretty fondly.  One
of the things that I do as a software engineer is to design and
implement secure systems and protocols.  I still use the knowledge
that I gained on that Saturday morning as a high-school senior pretty
frequently.

Regards,

--kevin
-- 
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