My Kryptonite... programming

Because of my tendency to want to work quickly through problems I never truly commit the amount of time towards working on programs that I need to and I've suffered greatly for that this semester. However, there is hope for me! I have found that whenever I am able to sit down and slowly go over problems I can generally work them out logically. When making up my worksheets this past week (with Kason and Danish) I was able to work out most problems where the code was already written by writing down each step as I went through it. Admittedly I would need some correcting here and there, but with my great mentors I was able to get back on track pretty quickly. So although its too late for me to get back on top of things especially in this class, I have at least been able to see that with the right mindset I can understand code and hopefully be able to eventually actually code in the future. And I'd like to apologize for my lack of zeal in this class and poor work ethic. This is (in my mind) uncharacteristic of me and its a shame that you'll now know me by this lack of effort.

Coding

So I'm not sure if I'll be able to form a question out of this but essentially I have a major issue with coding. I find myself able to generally understand what people are trying to do when they are coding for themselves. However, when I sit in front of the screen ready to type I never know where to even begin. Because of this I find it hard to do most labs and and fill in the space type worksheets. This block has been hard for me to overcome and really I haven't truly gotten there yet (although I guess that wasn't much of a shocker). I know there is a general format to follow such as after you start a class you add the instance variables, the constructor, modifier, accessor, and then the toString method. But I don't always know what explicitly to write. Another thing is I feel that the default and initialization constructors do the exact same thing so why have them both instead of just one? And I feel the modifier is too. So I guess my question could be why do we need those 5 methods I mentioned?

Arrays and Loops

I find arrays fun to work through once you decipher whats going on and the patterns created within them (for 2D arrays). However, I feel that arrays and 2d arrays are essentially the same exact thing except that 2d arrays add rows to the mix and need a tiny bit more code ( i.e. an extra pair of brackets [ ]). So my question is why are arrays taught as a separate class instead of being part of the 2d array lecture, and why do we even need to have arrays when 2d arrays can do the exact same things as far as I can tell.

Also, I find myself having trouble writing loops. I can understand them when I'm reading the code, but starting from scratch I never know where to begin or where its appropriate to use them. When do you want to use a for loop compared to a while or if loop?

References and Parameters

So I'm finally beginning to understand references and parameters... or so I think. And even though I only got a 7 out of 10 on my most recent retake of the quiz I at least was able to fully understand why I missed certain questions. I tend to want to work quickly through problems especially when it comes to math or other logic type subjects, and it is this that I think has been one of my biggest blocks in both understanding references & parameters and computer programming in general. So I've learned that by writing down my steps I can see whats going on which really helps for these kinds of problems. I'm still a bit shaky with aliases but I think I've got those for the most part as well. It can sometimes be hard to tell what is looking where once you start getting into longer codes. I enjoyed the 3 part question though on the quiz since it really does test your ability to keep track of all your variables while you go through the code.