Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Challenges?

Nothing in life is easy. Everything has its challenges, including programming. The material prior to the midterm, I would not say was very easy, but it was definitely not extremely challenging. However, as the classes went on, the material became more and more difficult. One of my biggest challenge is coming up with my own code.Writing code is not just input and output.  Remember when I said that programming only used basic math? Well, I would like to take that back. So far, the codes that I had to write did use basic math. However, the thinking process is extremely similar to math, which is why I find math difficult. In math, we are taught a set of rules and results of certain equations and to answer the questions we have to manipulate everything we were taught. This is the same with programming. In this course, we are taught a number of different rules and functions. To come up with a code, we have to use everything we learned and in a way think outside of the box to come up with the solution. We have to manipulate and think of the rules from different perspectives. Maybe this is a sign that I still have not spent enough time on practicing how to use my brain to think like a programmer.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Goals?

Before a new course starts or even a new school year starts, often times people set goals for themselves. By setting these goals, people are able to push themselves to reach their targets and sometimes they might even surpass their initial target. So what are my goals for this course? Well, my main goal is really simple, it is to give programming a chance. In the past, I had never ever considered taking a programming course at all. This is because, as stated before in my previous post, I thought that programming was only for those who were exceptionally good at math. I just never really saw myself as a very tech-savy person either. Therefore, I did not even think twice about taking a course that was related to dealing with things as technical as programming. I admit it is very sad that I had kept myself in this box for 4 years of high school. But now I am happy to say that I have accomplished this goal and I have stepped outside of my box.With an open mind, I was introduced to the world of programming and I strongly believe that because of this, I am now able to finally understand more of the course material.

Is it interesting to me??

Before going to class, I honestly did not know what to expect from this course. I did not know whether or not I would fully understand the material and in my head, I was pretty sure I would not enjoy this course. After the first couple lectures, I was still not able to completely grasp the idea of programming since I had no prior experience with coding. However, the tutorials really helped reinforce the ideas that were covered in lecture. Furthermore, by spending more time playing with DrRacket, I was starting to get the hang of how an actual programmer thinks.That being said, I am beginning to find programming fairly interesting. By using DrRacket and a certain set of functions, I am able to modify images and even add animation to them, which I think is amazing considering the only  input is a couple lines of code. CSC104, allows me to explore my creative side in a whole new way. More importantly, DrRacket is no longer just  a random program with words and symbols on a screen, it is so much more. Now I am able to somewhat communicate with this program by speaking their language, similar to human interactions.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

Why Did I Choose CSC104?

So you might ask, out of all the courses available at the University of Toronto,what made me choose CSC104 as one of my courses? Well to be honest, one of the only reasons I took CSC104 is because this course is a prerequisite for my intended major, cognitive science. If it wasn't for this requirement, I would have never even considered taking a computational course. But why? Well one of the main reason is that I can never see myself doing anything related to computer programming. To me, a stereotype of a computer programmer is someone that is good at math and that is definitely not me. Furthermore, because I have never done anything related to coding, with the influence of the media, I just automatically assume it is very difficult. However, after taking this course, my perception of the course has changed quite a bit. As I said before, I thought that computer programming was purely based on math. But, very quickly, I learned that this is not true, at least not for CSC104. Computer programming is more of learning and understanding a certain set of rules and thinking of those rules from different perspectives in order to make the program perform a particular task. Once the program is able to perform that particular task, the programmer has already succeeded, and this is a very satisfying feeling.