JAVA Week 3

I think it's safe to say I am official nerd now.  I am working on my Java homework on a Friday evening, because I want to. Yay Nerds. This week we are working on conditionals.... "if" and "else" statements.  The flowcharts came to me very quickly and easily this time.  The first problem was to write a program that has the user hold the Finch in one of four positions and the Finch tells his position.  I started out trying to get one if statement to work, before I put the other four in the program.  That was a good idea, because my first one wouldn't work.   After spending an hour looking over my notes and the professor's notes and even watching a  NetBeans tutorial, I was finally reminded about the "no semi colon after an if" rule.  

 

After I fixed that, it was smooth sailing and everything worked beautifully.  A little while later, my mom stopped in and was intrigued by the Finch and really wanted to see what I wrote for it.  I ran the program in NetBeans, so (as some of you know) all the text is printed out in a little window at the bottom of the screen - which confused her right off the bat.  After we got past the lame interface issue, we successfully ran the program and she said, "Is that all it does?"  I replied, "Yeah, it tells you which way it is facing."  She laughed and said, "Well who the hell cares about that?"  All she really cared about was whether or not I could fix the Java Updater error she was getting on her desktop.

Beginner programmers get no love.  

JAVA Week 2.5

The main concepts of week 2 were declaring variables, assignment statements, operators, and output.  Very simple, basic, functions.  These concepts were really easy to understand when we were doing text only sample programs on the board - I totally felt like I understood everything.  So, I was really frustrated when I was struggling to apply them to our Homework assignment with the Finch.

In the examples the professor does on the board, the programs are made up, so, the programs do whatever he says they can do.  The Finch has a library, so it can only do what  the library says.  Also, there were a few key statements necessary to control the Finch, that weren't discussed in the examples on the board. One of them in particular was the "scan.nextInt" command. 

It was very difficult for ME to go from writing a text program that figures sales tax to telling the Finch to get information from it's sensors and then move it's wheels based on that information.  I know the text examples were supposed to easily and gently introduce us to Java syntax, but...... It confused me to have meaningless programs explained verbally on a whiteboard and then make me try to figure out how to apply those concepts in a platform I have never seen, using a "library" that I didn't truly understand.  I think that I would have caught on quicker if he had started off writing Finch programs in NetBeans and let us follow along.   

I finally got it today. (I think)  Now, looking back at the homework problems, I see how easy they are.  I see how the professor tried to make it easy and spell out exactly what he wanted us to do, even giving us hints on how to make the program work.  I am actually excited now to start the Week 3 homework to see if I really do understand it!   I am so glad we are using the Finch and I am glad that this class is going to be challenging.  

JAVA Week One

It is only my first week of school and I love my CS classes already.  The Professor for my Java programming class is using the Finch Robot instead of a text book.  I am actually surprised that any computer science teacher would use a textbook.  I took CAD for 2 years and I don't remember opening a textbook ever.  The Professor would work on her computer and we would follow along.  Then we would get a sheet of dimensions and draw on our own.  I guess the difference is, architecture is objects and programming is mostly text.  Also, teaching how to USE a program must be different than teaching how to CREATE a program.  I think the Finch will be way more fun to practice programming - instead of just running text programs in that dreary Net Beans.

I have a feeling everyone says this, but I think it's not the actual "programming" that interests me.  All this Java, language, detailed, syntax crap kind of makes me feel bored.  I feel like I can look at a list of Java syntax and memorize what it's function is.  Yay Syntax.  Not me - it's those algorithms that fascinate me.  I can't believe how much I struggled with the extremely simple problem solving exercises we did in class Wednesday - but it was SO fun!  That's what I want to do! I want to help people come up with amazing programs that will make their organizations function more efficiently.  I want to design the program and the applications and organize the information and make it all look pretty and be really easy to use.  Somehow, I have the feeling that the same job everyone else wants too.  :)

I'll post a picture of my finch on my blog next week.