Being Sick is a Dual-Edged Sword

So last week I was sick for a couple days. Sucks, I know. The good part about being sick is the repose. I had two days off to catch up on my health, and that was a big help. The bad part was when I came back. All the work I had when I returned just piled on the stress. With all the extracurricular stuff I had to do on top of that extra work, "casi perdi el juicio," they say in Spanish (I almost went ape-****). The only redeeming thing was that I realized that I hadn't turned in four worksheets in Comp Sci. It helps to be sick sometimes...

WordSearch SUCCESS

I got around to downloading jGrasp on my home machine the other day, something that I should have done long ago. It was kind of a hassle given that I use Mac, but no more than installing and running any other program. This allowed me to work at home in a RELAXED environment, and I found that the speed at which I could work was much greater than in the classroom. I worked on the wordsearch lab from home, and in almost no time, I was able to get the runner to run up, down, left, right, and diagonally! The joke's on you Mr. Stephens, because all the words are in the word search! Sperry is not, however, as I modified the text document to search for that too. I love when things go how I plan them.

11/18/12

2D arrays was the topic of the week in Comp Sci this week. Nested for loops had me confused for a while, but now I understand. The problem therein was that I had missed a day, and that didn't help with my comprehension. It took much longer than usual for me to grasp the concept, and I often had to ask Mr. Stephens for help. Thank God I got it. Moral of the story: don't miss a class. Ever.

Studying Pays Off

Last week was the six weeks exam, and this time around, I studied. It was a great help it turns out, as I got a 109. This is in stark contrast with what I got before, and it highlights how important studying is in getting good grades. I was confused on a few things, but after clarifications, I knew all the subject material and did pretty well on the multiple choice etc. Going forward, I'll keep this comparison in mind when I take further tests in Comp Sci.

Linear Algebra

Last week was spent learning about arrays, and I'm starting to feel comfortable with computer programming. Arrays are a string of values, and I'm used to working with things like these, i.e. vectors and matrices. I realized a traves of Mr. Stephens' presentation that sound is just an array, and I know it may kill the purists out there to hear me say it, but I feel like you can synthesize anything digitally, and that's a very powerful capability, given all the manipulation computers can do to data.

File This Away

Last week was spent learning about files in Java, and I feel like we're making our first actual connections to the real world. For the first time, we are writing data to a file outside our Java executor, and it excites me that we're finally breaking out of this plastic bubble and doing computer stuff. I see a lot more application with independent files, such as writing a virus to blow up the world. Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahahahaha BOOOM.

Stop Hitting Yourself, Stop Hitting Yourself

This week in Comp Sci was a momentus occasion: the introduction of the "while" loop. It lets you do things ad infinitum, except you only want to do it to a certain constraint. Infinite loops scare me though. Honestly, it makes me feel claustrophobic from my chair, because the finality of it being infinite feels like there is no escape. I guess that with time and a little help from jGrasp I'll get over it, but right now that seems like a scary thing to me. The only upside is that I still haven't written one! Ha! Hahahahahahaha! It's only a matter of time though...

int x=0;

while (int x==0){
    System.out.println("I will not write infinite loops");
}

Else if this Else that

So this week in Comp SCIENCE was spent learning about if and else statement, and boy was it fun. With the introduction of boolean statements comes the logic aspect of the class, and now I feel like these programs have a practical application more than straightforward motion. I can't wait to start legit stuff, like making robots and stuff! This really excites me, and I feel like this is the part of the class in which I can really shine. I'm a good chocolate maker, B!$N!7CH

Wait What? Acorn Schism?

This post is more of an aphorism, or whatever that word is, cause I didn't study for the English quiz today. Anyways, it's a general statement expressing an overarching truth. YOU NEED TO STUDY. There. That's it. I really feel like I should have studied for the Comp Sci exam more than anything. Chars are confusing, and I got pretty much every char question wrong on the exam. There were even questions that I got right that I wasn't sure of. It was not fun to stare at the screen and know that I would never in all the time left in the universe figure this out. So, in closing, there are a lot of things in life, a lot of stuff to learn. It's nice to go back and relearn them before you're tested, because you'll be surprised when you see:

char z = 74;

System.out.println(z+3);

and can't remember if that's the letter or the ASCII number. And you thought yourself perfect...

Let's Go To Class

This week in Comp Sci was all about classes. What confounded me initially were constructors. I had no idea how you could have something that worked without declaring a class or return type, but I just kind of went with it for a while. The moral of the story was that you have to wait, however, for as we expounded on the idea of classes and objects, it all became clear to me. Constructors are what allow you to actually create the object that is acted upon within the parameters of the object class. It seems obvious now, but things can be really confusing initially

Turtles and Stuff Like That

Turtles are the stars of the show right now in comp sci, and that's not cool. Besides being deathly slow, turtles are pretty ugly. More importantly, it's frustrating. We are given this directory with the turtle object and a set of methods to act upon it and I have no idea how it works. Until now, we've been building everything from the ground up, and being affronted with so much information is something I'm not used to. I hope that in the future, this will get easier to understand, but I realize that I have a long way to go in learning how to program in Java, and that's just even more encouragement.

IT'S LIKE INCEPTION

This past week was spent learning about methods. With this "method" (excuse the pun), I'm getting to understand the way that Java is an object-based language. Being able to create objects and call them in other programs is a very useful way to organize code because it's like making a bunch of folders to put stuff into. At first though, I found it very complicated. When we got our first programming assignment on methods, I almost made myself scream with frustration trying to figure out how to write a method to put into a different method that I would call in my main. I stared at the screen for a while and then asked Mr. Stephens for help. It turned out that I was making things too complicated. Sometimes things are simpler than they seem...

Learning Languages?

We've started our foray into the Java language in our Computer Sciences class this week, and I can't help but see it as a parallel to any other language class I've taken. You take clauses, the structure of which varies language by language. In Spanish, subject pronouns are not necessary if the meaning of the verb is clear enough; in French, you always need to put a subject pronoun before a verb; in Java, you always have to give your variable or scanner a name before playing with it. It's amazing how quickly that you can start to express yourself in complex ways. Given just the small amount of code we've learned, I can already write a program that gives you an acceptable age of woman to date back in the folk country. As we build our vocabulary and programming techniques, it's akin to adding vocabulary and verb tenses in a foreign language; as time goes on, your depth of expression increases until you can express yourself just as well in that language as your mother tongue. It's an exciting feeling to be able to reach out and touch that chord of emotion (well, since emotion doesn't exist in computers, that degree of functionality that you can dictate in English) in multiple ways.