This blog is a first for me so I am not sure exactly what I am supposed to say to whom, so I will start by introducing myself. My name is Theo and will be keeping a course log (or SLOG if you prefer, I don't) for CSC 104. I am a first year student in math and physics just to give some perspective.
I'm kicking myself for letting this assignment sneak up on (and past) me, as I am working on this a day late. The biggest pitfall for the one day a week class has been letting myself forget about it until the day of. I have decided to put a reminder in my calendar to check the course website at least one other time during the week.
So far the course content has been manageable. The history covered in lectures in interesting though I am glad it is kept brief. Fortunately I have seen fields in base 2 in my Math courses already so this is one less thing to worry about. If I have any advice for people who are struggling with the idea, it would be to consider the similarities with base 10 (regular every day numbers), the two really aren't as different as they seem at first.
DrRacket on the other hand has been a small but very real source of stress for me. The tough thing for me is to remember the different functions and how they work with each other. For instance, rotating an image counter-clock wise was simple and given in the tutorial exercises, but trying to remember how to rotate an image by degrees was a fruitless endeavour. Armed with only the word rotate, an image, and some number of degrees, I tried a variety of different combinations with no success. To remedy this I will be making more use of the picturing programs pdf. As if that were not frustrating enough, DrRacket (and I suppose programming in general) is so incredibly pedantic that nothing seems to work on the first try, and rarely the second. One redeeming value however is receiving an error message that tells you what it is that is not working. That is a luxury I do appreciate.
This brings to an end my first weekly log for the course, hopefully I don't get drilled too badly for being a little late with my first entry. Good luck to everyone with the test tomorrow!
Theo
I do the same thing: I try a command several times and read the error messages. If I'm really stuck, I'll hover and right-click on a command or look for documentation. Even after years of programming, the trial-and-error method seems to stick.
ReplyDeleteThats good to know about the right-click, I had forgotten that it was pointed out in class. Thanks.
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