Brief Summary of CSC104 - End of Semester

Time flies. As I could even remember the very first day of the csc 104 lecture, and now we are stepping towards the final period. Csc 104 have brought me so much joyfulness and memories that I will highly recommend junior fellow students who are interested in computer programming but never touched this before to take as an interesting fundamental build-up. If people go to lectures every time, finish up homework and exercises, you should be okay to survive on all the quiz and tests. Anyway, from my perspective, interest is the best teacher ever. If people feel curious on how computer can do whatever programmers ask to do. Then it will boom you up in each hard setback. This enthusiasm gives you confident to fight for a comparatively long time. 

This course’s main idea is about function design. One thing which is quite important to know is what your function do? what’s the purpose of your function? Is it trying to produce images using numbers customers provided? Or is it made to calculate addition or multiplication of given numbers? Once you know the purpose of your function, everything else will be easier. 

After finish writing codes, run definitions successfully, a very pivotal step to me is to debug all unexpected algorithmic error. My personal suggestion would be the error message. Pay attention to each error message as it plays the role of computer feedback. When there are mistakes occur in your program, don’t be panic, stay calm and trace back the whole calculating process, I sincerely believe every programmer will figure out.

Keep doing what you are interested in. Stay with computer science. 

Mark received

I receive the midterm mark yesterday, which is quite acceptable, but the disappointing thing is, this time criterion is very strict on tiny types of mistakes which makes me surprised a lot. I even type the function in my DrRacket programming system and find out the same result as mine. But TA writes “ missing step” and deducted 3 times the same thing repeatedly. I’m like.....................

Probably I need submit the remark form. :( 

Short summary for week 10.22

I initially found computer programming maybe stressful because I heard a lot complain about how the programming is difficult and hard to understand why there’s bug occurs. It is very confusing since people may feel stress on debug process. Until now, I already finish the first section of my DrRacket programming studying, and for me, it’s happiness more than struggle. I was thinking that program a code to let computer produce an image would be quite hard at the very first ( because I haven’t learned how to programming before. It’s kinda like not feel confident about myself.) But when I successfully let DrRacket do what I asked it to do, and it produced what I want it to produce, I find it becomes to me more proudness than disappointing. It’s an enjoyable emotion than any other thing can’t bring to you! I get a sense that what people mean by let computer do things what human beings don’t want to. In the future, probably we can write more code to let artificial intelligence to do more stuff.

Also for project one, I will go to TAs office hours to get some help on the codes I wrote. Because for me I feel easier to get help from people who are nearly aged.

Preparing for quizzes~~~~~

People want to do well on the quiz, I think you should be able to attend the lecture every day. I did that so, and after the lecture, I studied a lot on the course materials. If something I don’t understand I will either come to the office hour or ask questions on the piazza to make it clear. I read the lecture slides every day, and read textbook very often.  Also, I watch DrRacket programming youtube videos to help me understand.

Thus when it comes to the tutorial quiz, I’m not afraid at all. 

An image function I made :)

The function I wrote which makes me very proud of, is quite like a tower, here it is

(define 0 (square 0 "outline" "black"))

(define 1 (square 15 "outline" "black"))

(define tower  (above               (beside 1 0 0 0 0 0 0)                  (beside 1 1 0 0 0 0 0)                 (beside 1 1 1 0 0 0 0)                  (beside 1 1 1 1 0 0 0)                 (beside 1 1 1 1 1 0 0)                  (beside 1 1 1 1 1 1 0)                  (beside 1 1 1 1 1 1 1)))  

CSC104 Midterm short sum up

Time flies, midterm for CSC 104 already comes to an end. The most important thing is that the midterm test. For the test, I almost finish reading textbook which is covered in the midterm. I find textbook is really understandable due to the fact that it explained a lot of detail on how the program works on functions, strings, and how do computer communicate with people. 

Combine with lecture slides posted on the course website, when I find something which is really hard to memory or to understand I open the DrRacket and type the function in. By “step” function there’s even more helpful for me to comprehend what we’ve learned so far. 

I also find that the videos on Youtube related to DrRacket programming are quite good resources for us to make use of. The person in that video does the programming indeed helps me to know how this programming language works. And make me feel confident when I use this programming language. Due to the fact that person in the video didn't make many bugs that for me do the same wor,  I shouldn't neither. Let me willing to try.

All above is the method I use to prepare my midterm CSC term test. I hope it will also be helpful to CSC students who are taking this course with me. 

Begin my computer science study

I’m so interested in computational studies, but I never touched this area before. Instead of being enrolled in some courses difficult. I’d rather choosing something simple to start.  Also in the 21st century, if people want to find a job easier it’s better to know how to use some programming language. Doesn’t matter from which perspective, csc104, as one of the programmings course in the UofT, is the best option for me to choose. I was thinking that this course could teach me how to think in a computational way, how to communicate with the computer, and know at least one language very well.  

I find the programming is even more interesting than I expected. I can use the language that my laptop understand. I can ask my computer to do things for me. How exciting is this! 

I find the online course website very useful that prof has posted some related videos and notes. I hope prof can post more useful materials online. Sometimes I studied by myself to prepare for the quizzes, and the results turned out to be pretty satisfied. Hopefully, the quizzes can be a little bit simpler in the future.

I do hope to get touch in some languages like Java or Python in the future. 

All the best. 

Happy studying.