We had our seconds test this week, and as the title suggests I ran out of time. I felt pretty confident going into the test as I knew that I had studied pretty hard for it. From what I could tell the content of the test coincided with what I had studied and I felt like I was coasting going into the final DrRacket section.
Unfortunately I had taken too much time on the first portion of the test and had to scramble to complete the final portion. I was mad at myself as I had made it a point of mine to do better on the DrRacket portion of the test as it was what cost me an 'A' on my first test and I had studied Picturing Programs specifically for this test.
I tried to answer as much as I could of the remaining questions in hopes that I will be able to get part marks, what was most frustrating was the fact that I knew how to answer the questions but I simply did not have enough time to get my answers in. I know going into the exam that I will be sure to manage my time more effectively. Let's hope I didn't shoot myself in the foot again.
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Project 1 Success
We had to submit our first project last night, it was a program that once completed would act as a clock. I completed it with a lot of time to spare, everything seemed to be working the way it was described in the comments of the code.
Overall I was pleased with the challenge that was put before us in the first project. I started it a week in advance and completed about 80% of the project on the first day alone. It was that last 20% that was giving me the most grief but I was able to complete it after reading through Picturing Programs.
Picturing Programs proved to be an invaluable resource for this project. I read through at least a quarter of the book in search of the solution to many of my problems. It really is the DrRacket bible for all new beginners to the language.
The biggest challenge I faced was when it came to removing the background of the images which were being used for the hands of the clock, I eventually solved it and I experienced an immediate wave of relief across my body. I have never really felt that when programming, at least not with DrRacket.
I even took time once I had submitted the program to try and make the clock look a little more aesthetically pleasing, we were told that this wouldn't lead to any extra credit for us so I didn't include it in my submission. Overall when all was said and done I felt that project 1 definitely challenged my skills in DrRacket and thankfully I was able to come out on top. I can only hope that this remains true going into the second project.
Overall I was pleased with the challenge that was put before us in the first project. I started it a week in advance and completed about 80% of the project on the first day alone. It was that last 20% that was giving me the most grief but I was able to complete it after reading through Picturing Programs.
Picturing Programs proved to be an invaluable resource for this project. I read through at least a quarter of the book in search of the solution to many of my problems. It really is the DrRacket bible for all new beginners to the language.
The biggest challenge I faced was when it came to removing the background of the images which were being used for the hands of the clock, I eventually solved it and I experienced an immediate wave of relief across my body. I have never really felt that when programming, at least not with DrRacket.
I even took time once I had submitted the program to try and make the clock look a little more aesthetically pleasing, we were told that this wouldn't lead to any extra credit for us so I didn't include it in my submission. Overall when all was said and done I felt that project 1 definitely challenged my skills in DrRacket and thankfully I was able to come out on top. I can only hope that this remains true going into the second project.
Saturday, November 3, 2012
DrRacket: Thoughts So Far
We're about 2 months into the semester now and we've been slowly growing our knowledge in DrRacket as the course has progressed. DrRacket as a programming language is pretty interesting to use, I have only ever used Object Oriented Turing and Java previously.
For the most part DrRacket has seemed pretty simple to understand, through the first month or so of the semester we really only learned the basics of the language. It has its limitations of course but its still impressive to me how it tries to make the language easy to understand while still fairly powerful.
Over the past month we have started to learn more complex things that the language can do, this past week we learned about working with strings and conditionals. Working with strings was pretty straight forward, it was cool to see how we can manipulate a string of text but it was nothing to really scratch your head over. Conditionals at first sparked a bit of confusion in me but I eventually got the hang of them and what I can do with them.
The biggest issue I have had with DrRacket is simply doing the check-expect expressions to test the code. I have never been one to do the extra steps in something to make sure it works, I always like to hash out a problem myself and try and problem solve when a problem arises. However, I have started to warm to the idea of doing check-expect expressions - mostly because the quizzes expect us to know how to do them. I have gotten the hang of them and they really do help out in the programming process.
For the most part DrRacket has seemed pretty simple to understand, through the first month or so of the semester we really only learned the basics of the language. It has its limitations of course but its still impressive to me how it tries to make the language easy to understand while still fairly powerful.
Over the past month we have started to learn more complex things that the language can do, this past week we learned about working with strings and conditionals. Working with strings was pretty straight forward, it was cool to see how we can manipulate a string of text but it was nothing to really scratch your head over. Conditionals at first sparked a bit of confusion in me but I eventually got the hang of them and what I can do with them.
The biggest issue I have had with DrRacket is simply doing the check-expect expressions to test the code. I have never been one to do the extra steps in something to make sure it works, I always like to hash out a problem myself and try and problem solve when a problem arises. However, I have started to warm to the idea of doing check-expect expressions - mostly because the quizzes expect us to know how to do them. I have gotten the hang of them and they really do help out in the programming process.
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