Week 3

It's the third week of writing our slogs and it seems like this course is starting to pick up with its material. We're continuing to learn about different functions and how to manipulate images whether by layering them on top of one another or rotating them. These functions are getting harder to remember and understand, but with time I'm sure i'll start to get it. It's interesting to see how simple words/phrases when put together can be manipulated into different functions on Dr. Racket. Our first test for this course is coming up and with everything that we've learned in class, I think that it'll be manageable. Learning new things takes time, therefore I know that with time I'll start to catch onto the different kinds of functions and remember what can manipulate what.

Week 2

I've now been in this course for 2 weeks and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it all. It was overwhelming in the beginning but once I tried the exercises it seemed a lot easier than I expected.This week we were taught "check-expect" programming and at first I was yet again overwhelmed, but as the class went on it started to make more sense. As this course continues I'm starting to see how light and accommodating it is; if I ever have a question it's always answered as soon as possible whether by Danny or a TA. Danny is a very interactive professor, and as a hands-on/visual learner the way he presents his lectures makes it a lot easier to understand. For example our Thursday lecture with the "Racing with Alice" table (with numbers, letters, and symbols), the approach that Danny took on trying to explain how the table should be read was very interesting. He had one student do arm gestures to represent numbers and another student write down the numbers to solve the phrase; all of this was done in order to show how long transmitting and transcribing information can take when we (humans) do it versus how quick it could be done by a computer. Overall, this week I learned more programming definitions as well as different types of mechanical devices there were and are used for all kinds of different purposes.

Week 1

I came into this class feeling a little overwhelmed. I'm not the best with computers nor do I spend time investigating what goes into computer programming. I intimidated myself in believing that this course was strictly for people who are very familiar with computer programming, thus I started to doubt myself. The first day of class was an introduction to all the different kinds of things we would be expecting throughout the course as is every class on the first day. As I continued going to the morning classes, watching the videos and reading the exercises I put more faith into my own capabilities. These past few classes are honestly very easy, I don't know what to expect as the year goes on, however, I am becoming more and more interested in this course. I'm the type of person who likes a challenge and also loves problem solving. These first couple of classes have shown me what algorithms are as well as where they can be used. For example the peanut butter and jam exercise was interesting and I thought that it was a really good way to keep the students attention because from experience I've never had a teacher and or professor try and make a point in such a way. Being able to use the computer program Dr. Racket is also a first for me, therefore being able to learn and understand what computers can do to images, symbols, numbers etc. is very intriguing. Overall it seems like i've learned a lot over the past couple of weeks, such as the fact that there are multiple ways that algorithm can affect our everyday lives as well as the different types of things we can do with images, symbols, numbers etc. on computer programs such as Dr. Racket.