Oct 6th Slog
I had always wanted to take a computer science course. Unfortunately, this was possible neither in my high school nor in my college. I decided to use my semestre abroad experience to seize the opportunity to learn how basic problems can be solved through computation, and thus, enrolling into CSC 104 was the natural choice to make. To me, basic computer programming or even using a logical thought process is paramount to making rational decisions. At the end of the course, I expect to have at least an idea of how programming works, what applications could it be used for and what kind of problems I can solve this way.
Before this course, the only, albeit little, experience I had was some programming in Java that I had taught myself via Youtube tutorials so while I could understand the basic notions such as the use of annotations, parenthesis and semi colons, I still don't fully grasp programming itself, let alone on a new language as we use in Dr. Racket. Also, since I made my way into the course about two weeks after classes started, I feel like there were some things I had to also teach myself fairly rapidly. Fortuntaely, I've been able to catch up lately and actually make progress on my own beyond the class requirements on Dr. Racket. I sometimes feel like Dr. Racket is a bit too limited (maybe it's just that I don't know it that well) in comparison to other software such as Eclipse for Java.
The main difficulty I've found is with the written form of the subject, I'm used to figuring things out through trial and error and therefore sometimes predicting exactly what something will do can be a little difficutt, even if I know the general thing that will happen. I still don't have any grades from my quizzes since I started later but I think I've been doing okay, just as I expected to do considering I started a little bit later. I am particularily interested in machine learning or processes through which there is some sort of "evolutionary" procedure. I was recently watching Carykh's series on Youtube about the "Evolution Simulator" and was really interested in building something similar myself, although I for now lack the skills to do so.
Before this course, the only, albeit little, experience I had was some programming in Java that I had taught myself via Youtube tutorials so while I could understand the basic notions such as the use of annotations, parenthesis and semi colons, I still don't fully grasp programming itself, let alone on a new language as we use in Dr. Racket. Also, since I made my way into the course about two weeks after classes started, I feel like there were some things I had to also teach myself fairly rapidly. Fortuntaely, I've been able to catch up lately and actually make progress on my own beyond the class requirements on Dr. Racket. I sometimes feel like Dr. Racket is a bit too limited (maybe it's just that I don't know it that well) in comparison to other software such as Eclipse for Java.
The main difficulty I've found is with the written form of the subject, I'm used to figuring things out through trial and error and therefore sometimes predicting exactly what something will do can be a little difficutt, even if I know the general thing that will happen. I still don't have any grades from my quizzes since I started later but I think I've been doing okay, just as I expected to do considering I started a little bit later. I am particularily interested in machine learning or processes through which there is some sort of "evolutionary" procedure. I was recently watching Carykh's series on Youtube about the "Evolution Simulator" and was really interested in building something similar myself, although I for now lack the skills to do so.
Hi Lucas, my name is Landy, I'm one of your TA's for CSC104!
ReplyDeleteGood feedback from your experience so far! You have a few spelling/grammatical mistakes in your post, so just review your post for the next time.
I would love to know about what you find interesting in the course so far, and how you go about studying for the quizzes.
Also, I use to figure out things using trial and error too, but as time goes on you'll become more keen on predicting the behavior of certain things. It's difficult, but I think that's one of the most important things about computer science, understanding the process before you start programming. :) Keep up the good work!