Defining Week 3

I think I will come up with some creative post titles or start my posts with computer science puns/jokes.

Tuesday's class was the introduction of definition and coding! When the professor handed out a handout and told the class to fill in the empty line, I was so scared  because it was so overwhelming to see that much coding in one page. To be honest, I sat there re-reading each line and attempted it. It was somewhat successful, but felt discouraged.

Learning about definition brings some ease when I'm writing my functions because it can get long. However, I think what's frustrating and confusing is how one code can have so many coding embedded.  For example:
This was from the definition video
(check-expect (rosette pic:calendar)
                       (beside
                         (above pic:calendar (flip-vertical pic:calendar))
                        (flip-horizontal
                          (above pic:calendar (flip-vertical pic:calendar)))))

Visualizing how the pic:calendar would look in the end was confusing, so I kept on re-watching the videos over and over again. The check-expect test does help when checking the functions that I am creating. But after watching the videos, I realized that these embedded functions are similar to "peeling an onion", that I have to go pass one layer first, to get to the next layer. It helped in the end!

Welcome to my Blog!

Hello fellow readers,

Welcome to my blog! This is my first post for my Computer Science class and I am quite excited for what it is in store for me.  The coding language that I will be learning is DrRacket and I must say: "so far, so good!" Watching all the DrRacket videos are informative, especially with the colorful lizard pictures throughout the videos (hence the picture above). I hope to be more familiarize with it by next week when I download the program into my laptop.

This week in class, I learned about the algorithms and what interested me was the life application to algorithms. When asked to write a simple algorithm to make pbj sandwich, I thought it was very easy. But when my professor actually applied the algorithm, I realized that there were so many minor details that I forgot to mention. Therefore, when writing algorithms for programs, I think it is very important to be as precise as possible because, not only is the computer running my program, but also, another reader wants to understand what I am writing in my program.

Looking forward to new materials!