Week 4 (Sept. 17th-23rd): CodingBat

This week we learned strings which seemed to make sense to me during the presentation, but once we were released to work on the lab I found myself hitting a wall with what to do.  I was able to get individual sentences to work, but never get all of the boxes checked off at once.  Since I started on the ABBA lab, I thought maybe the others would be different and I proceeded to go look at the rest of the labs.  Unfortunately I was wrong and they increased in difficulty as they went along (as one would logically expect them to).  This ate up class time, so I never did get it during class that day.  I mentioned my problem to Kason later in passing, and he suggested that I was thinking too narrow and to try a broader approach.  I ended up getting back on at home to try and figure it out once again, and sure enough my problem was I was trying to specifically make a sentence instead of inputting variables for what I wanted to accomplish.  Once I made my code more generalized, which only took one simple change, I was able to check off all of the boxes and therefore finish that lab.  After figuring this out, the rest of the labs seemed to fall in line quite quickly and I was able to knock out everything else with relative ease.  Being able to figure this out was quite the confidence boost for me in regards to my coding abilities.

Week 3 (Sept. 10th-16th): Methods

So I'm not quite comfortable with using methods yet, and had quite a difficult time when doing the Task lab.  During this lab I was able to get the first two parts done (course and favorite), but failed to figure out how to do the slightly more complex parts like wasted or count.  I feel like I must have missed out on something big since everyone else seemed to be on board with the lab.  This makes me think that I probably messed up the first parts of the lab as well, but honestly I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to be doing to edit these old labs.  So I guess my question would be, either how would I go about doing this lab or a more broad one like when would I want to use a method as supposed to writing out the code like I did in the original labs.  I'm aware drifting off during lecture is a sure way to miss key details which is what I'm afraid I probably did... however that is something I'm working on fixing!

Week 2 (Sept. 3rd-9th): Input and Variables

So we learned how to use Inputs and Variables this week, and initially I struggled to follow along (being tired didn't help much).  I think my problem was that I tend to focus on what I'll need to type to execute a certain task and why its written the way it is, instead of why I'm typing it and what its designed to accomplish.  After the lecture and example, I was able to go back to the slideshow I get a better grasp of when to use certain commands.  The first day we had to begin working on our programs I spent most of the class working on the "Datable" lab.  But with more help from the power point and a bit from Kason I was able to put together a working program that I was quite proud of.  The next day I was able to use this lab as a template for my other labs.  My proudest moment however was when working on the gallons wasted lab I kept wondering why my program wouldn't work when I would input 7.5 in my program for the drips per minute, when finally after a bit of thinking back to last class I remembered the mention of doubles to get decimals and everything began to make sense.  I know it may seem like an obvious thing to those who are used to programming, but being the beginner I am it was an exciting experience to finally comprehend what I'm doing.