SLOG Blogging

Here I am again giving an update on my time learning in my CSC104 class. Not a massive change from my last post but let's see if I can bring up any new advancements in my time in this course. 

So far my preparing for the quizzes has been the same, as now as opening the practice work posted on the course website has been my means of studying as well as going through personal notes I've made on my computer regarding different functions and steps. It's become a little tricky to review, due again to technical difficulties and an unreliable internet connection, but that's no excuse not to continue pressing forward. This course has been a work in progress to do well, and I believe I'll get there when I'm able to adequately prepare myself. 

As far as being proud of images I've made goes I believe overlaying images, or toying with the condition function has been the most enjoyable and satisfying things I've done so far. My computer tends to freeze when I run a program, or I get an error message from Dr.Racket that shuts the program down randomly which never helps. The course is coming off a little challenging due to these issues and keeping up in class can be hard if you miss a bit of information and feel you need to review everything from the beginning due to this. There isn't really anything at present that I have reconciled with that was previously difficult. Everything seems to make sense when you look at it long enough.

When it comes to asking questions, I would prefer a more one-on-one type of setting, so office hours are more preferable. I haven't taken advantage of asking for any assistance from any of these options, so I don't have any feedback to give on how to make it easier to for other students to ask questions. I will provide feedback as much as I can. I appreciate the CSC104 team for looking to improve the way they help students. This is a refreshing feeling than just feeling left in the dust by other courses. 

In short, my time through this course is challenging in its own way. Not that I wish to keep muttering on about it, it does make things difficult. I do enjoy the lectures, not that the pace is fast, but sometimes it is a little easy to get lost if you miss a bit of information and we just continue on. In the end, I'll catch up, but only one step at a time. 

The beginning of Programing

This is my first time blogging but I look forward to some of the response I get while I progress through my courses.

I chose CSC104 mostly because it was a requirement for my program in Cognitive Science, but to be fair, I had always been interested in the idea of programming. I have never really understood how it was supposed to work and never really looked into it. I did have a general interest in getting into a programming course when my friends had gone into it and would tell me about how they would develop programs in their free time. I don't have a lot of aspirations towards coding or programming, but I do have a curiosity for it. I mostly hope to get an understanding of programming in the course. My expectations for programming was that it would be stressful and fast-paced, while it is fast paced it isn't entirely difficult. Just like most things you have a set of rules on how to do things and if you follow things correctly then things work and if you don't then it doesn't.

So far my focus on programming has been to keep my head focused but I like the interactions with images and defining them. It kinda gives programming a game like feel to it, you can't progress to the next step until you do this. I find that interesting. Unfortunately getting used to all the rules is taking time, and with my computer constantly conking out most of the time closing Dr. Racket I end up losing track with what's going on in a lecture and forcing myself to have to learn later. That's a problem I'll have to fix with a new computer, but for now, I'll just need to do what I can to get by. I'd say that the course is about what I expected in terms of difficulty given that I had no idea what I was walking into, which challenges are nice but they're frustrating as well.

My time studying for quizzes is mostly trying out the worksheets posted on the website for that week and trying out the ones from the previous week. I'm not satisfied with my performance, I need to understand the terms better because I feel like I have an understanding, but the wording of a question might throw me off from a question I might actually know the answer to, which is more an issue of studying and opening myself up to more studying resources.

Are there any specific topics I'm interested in? I can't say there is right now, I'm still new to the course and programming to know how far my interest even goes. I still hold onto my curiosity to see what doors programming opens. I'm more interested in seeing the rest of my development in this class to see how well I fair. Right now I'm struggling a little but I'll grasp it at some point and see where that takes me.