Third Appointment with Dr. Racket

Almost 2 months have passed since the first lecture of csc104 and as always I find this course to be very exciting. Everyday we are learning new things such as creating different functions and applying those functions to carry out different tasks. I am continuously astounded by the fact that even the most complicated of tasks can be carried out by functions which are, at their core, just extensions of the basics. To most people programming gets to be a bit confusing later on as they learn more complicated application of functions but that is to be expected, even I feel like though the course has been pretty easy so far it is starting to get a bit harder. Although I don't find it hard enough yet to be causing me troubles. One of the reasons why I've not faced any difficulties so far may be due to the fact that every week I review what we learned in lectures. This helps me to strengthen my core and do amazing on the quizzes and tests. I am especially grateful for the weekly exercises given to us since they are the perfect way to review and test my knowledge.

With all this strengthening of the core concepts I have even been able to produce my own image on Dr. Racket. I was just reviewing one day when I thought that perhaps by applying all the knowledge learned in class I might be able to create an image of my own. After a few tries I got the hang of using different functions and was able to create some images. Though it is just a simple image now I hope to create an even more complicated image later on as we learn more in the course. One of the images I really enjoyed learning were fractals. When I saw that image on google before I wondered how this was created but compared to my initial thoughts the actual function to create the image was quite simple. This has me excited for what's to come next in lectures.

As I mentioned before in my previous blog, in the beginning I was having trouble with understanding some of the application of lists however now after having reviewed and practicing on my own I feel like the function list is now one of my strong points. I looked back at my notes then I tried to make my own lists and fiddled around with them, getting bunch of errors in the beginning, but that made me realize what I was doing wrong and helped me to understand. Another thing I am starting to have difficulties is on the assignment we have. There are repetitions, functions within functions and conditions as well and when all combined it starts to get confusing. However, I think that if I sit down and go through each function one by one I might be able to understand.

Usually when I am having trouble I like asking questions in person because for some reason whenever I ask something online such as on Piazza I tend to not understand or I am not able to properly ask the question I want to know the answer to. However, since I have lectures when the tutorial is happening I can't ask questions then either so in the end I have to rely on Piazza. Learning that there is CS Help Centre now I feel like I would probably use those hours to ask my questions. Though I would probably mostly have questions on the assignment only since I find the lecture material easy or at least something I can figure out myself.

Second Appointment with Dr. Racket

Last week we didn't have any lectures only a test so there wasn't anything new learned. At most all I can say is that I was grateful for the past exams to study from. When I was studying in the beginning I was confused on how to go about answering the questions but after some practice I got the hang of it which allowed me (I think) to do well on the test.

This week however, I loved the lectures. The thing I was most excited for, how to make different images/designs was taught. I was surprised as to how such complicated images were formed with such simple functions. This showed me that even all the difficult and complicated stuff are just extensions of the basic functions we learned in the beginning. We also learned another application of lists; lists within lists. In the beginning the list function simply confused me but after constantly working with it and practicing it I got the hang of it. I feel the same will happen if I just practice with this application of lists as well, because for now I am a bit confused about it.

First Appointment with Dr. Racket

Welcome ALL to my blog and I hope you enjoy your time here. I am just your average curious mind who wishes to learn about programming and this blog recounts my time spent with Dr. Racket. 

Many ask what is the importance of programming, what I'd like to ask how is programming not important in any way. In this era of technology where almost everyone has one type of electronic device, many do not know the full potential of those devices. Programming is also important in other fields of study. I'll give myself as an example, I am a life science student and when performing research experiments the organization and interpretation of the data recovered is a vital task. DNA is known to be the basis of life and all it is in reality is just a code composed of 4 letters meaning that life is simply information expressed in physical molecules. Thus the knowledge of creating programs capable of storing and managing the vast amount of data being uncovered in labs is important. By taking this computer science course I plan to expand my arsenal of skills by including knowledge of programming.

When I first heard about programming I thought it would be like what you see hackers do in movies, a bunch of incomprehensible sequence of letters and numbers used to hack into computers however that was not so. My first experience with programming was in high school where we had to design our own website without using the existing website making platforms on the internet. To my surprise programming was much easier than I initially thought, also since we were using the program Adobe Dreamweaver it was a bit easier to design the website. When I took this course I was thinking it would be somewhat similar to when I used Dreamweaver however that was not the case, though different, Dr. Racket is still pretty interesting and I feel that it fits my image of programming better. Only using codes for programming is more interesting and surprisingly it isn't difficult memorizing the different function calls. 

In my honest opinion I didn't think this course would be much fun and it would be a lot of memorization. However after the first few days of lecture I started enjoying myself. The thing that I found the most interesting was how simple codes can create different shapes. The different images and designs that were created truly blowed my mind. If you think about it letters and numbers don't leave much of an impact however later when you get their result it is truly baffling. So far we have only learnt of different functions and are just at the basics but however later I feel as we learn to apply these functions to create something that is when it will truly get interesting. As I said before that since we have just started to delve into the material overall the course is pretty easy. All the functions are much easier to remember than I initially thought and since I am a life science student one of my strong points is memorization. I can remember most of the stuff taught in lecture in just one go which make it easier to study for the quizzes. Just by going through the posted exercises at the end of the week I can ace my quizzes. I find that these weekly reviews are really helpful since you can refine the knowledge you gained in class and the exercise also considers the many simple mistakes a person could make by purposefully asking questions such as why would this statement produce an error. 

Since I am taking this course because I feel like it will help as I go into the field of research I'm interested in learning about computer graphics which will allow me to construct images of different organic molecules. I'm also interested in knowing how programs are developed since it will help me in creating my own program. Though I might not necessarily go into those fields I still wish to know a little about them to satiate my curiosity. Seems like this curiosity of mine will just make my life harder.