I finally uploaded an «open» photo to flickr! Here’s the link to my account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/153682983@N06/
Mastery Topics 2 & 28
Mastery Topic 2: C++ Good Style Conventions
This link is an extensive guide of the do’s and don’t’s and pros and cons of C++ proramming. It is very useful especially when writing long and complex programs. Remember that you should try to make your code as understandable as possible for anyone who tries to read it!! https://google.github.io/styleguide/cppguide.html
Mastery Topic 28: Demonstrate use of linux for quizzes and exams
During the semester, we did every quiz either on paper or on our own computers and submitting them through our blogs. However, last class Ken brought the USBs with linux so that we could see how it works and we can use them for our final exam, which will be next Tuesday. I tried one, and it was pretty simple, I only had to open Atom and the terminal and do the same thing that I’ve been doing all semester long. The only differences were that I didn’t have to search for the folder with the super long command that I needed in Cygwin (because everything is already in the USB) and I had to use «./a.out» like in Cloud9 instead of «./a.exe» like in Cygwin.
Course review
After coursing a whole semester with Ken’s new class model, I’d like to make a review of the class, the grading system and my perspective in general.
For starters, I found that the «go at your own pace» system was extremely helpful for organizing my schedule and actually learning, not just copying from someone to get the assignment done on time. Nevertheless, I think that this system wasn’t the best in the sense that it didn’t demand much of me. I mean, Ken always told us to go with him to asesorías and ask questions on the facebook group, but I’ve never been really keen on going to office hours nor using social media, especially for homework, so that was a bit complicated for me and probably what made the course somewhat difficult. The one time that I did go to office hours, however, Ken was very patient and knows how to explain everything in a way that you can easily understand, so I think that what was «bad» from this course was mainly my lack of devotion to it.
I really liked that you could learn in your own way and that Ken wasn’t like «you have to do this this way», like other teachers because he lets you think and develop problem solving skills. Also, the videos that he makes (and he can do one if you request it) are very, very, very helpful! So if you’re stuck and have no idea how to solve a problem or assignment you can use them as a last resource or to find new and different way to solve the same problem.
Ken really pushed me this semester to work collaboratively and help classmates or ask for help, which I believe is a skill that will be needed for our professional lives. I’ve always been the kind of person who works by herself and tries to do everything on my own, but now I can see how constructive it can be to work with others.
He also goes out of his way to teach us other stuff, like open source textbooks, how to give credit, etc.
In short, I can say that this was a great course and that I learned a lot. As a suggestion, I would tell Ken to post more optional WSQ’s to learn more topics, because they actually show you what the programming tools are useful for, and the mastery topics per se don’t really do that. I am glad that I chose to take this course with Ken and would greatly recommend it to anyone taking Programming in the following semesters.
-Valeria
«Test Bild» flickr photo by markus spiske https://flickr.com/photos/markusspiske/36605465764 shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license
SciLab
For this WSQ I had to download SciLab and sort of get to jnow how it works. After reading the very beginners manual and trying out the progra, I saw that it is very similar to a graphing calculator, except for some functions and the way it works, but the purpose of both is practically the same.
Maybe SciLab isn’t really useful for me now, but I’m sure it’ll become very usefuk in the future for my career.
Here are the links that I used:
- http://www.scilab.org/download/latest
- http://www.scilab.org/en/scilab/about
- http://www.scilab.org/content/download/849/7901/file/Scilab_beginners.pdf
-Valeria
IDE
Also…. at the beginning of the semester, while I still hadn’t downloaded GitHub, Atom, and Cygwin, I used Cloud9… so naturally I learned how to create and run programs inside an IDE (Integrated Developement Envrironment).
Here’s the link to my account:
-Valeria
Mastery Topic 26
At the beginning of the semester, we were required to create a Blog, a Twitter account, and GitHub account. However, I never made a blog post about it, so here are the links to said accounts:
- Blog: https://valeriactblog.wordpress.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/_valeriact
- *didn’t really use it for this course*
- GitHub: https://github.com/valeriact
-Valeria
«Collage of Digital (Social) Networks» flickr photo by Frau Hölle https://flickr.com/photos/frauhoelle/8464661409 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license
Tic Tac Toe
https://github.com/valeriact/tc1017/blob/master/tictactoe.cpp
The final project is done! I made the first part, that I published on a previous post, and Damian made the second and last part. From what he told me, he had a lot of help from Ken, but was able to do it nonetheless.
The process consisted of a lot (too much) debugging and then adding new features, like the input user error, play again, etc.
The final code is on the link at the beginning of this post.
-Valeria
Estimating E
For this WSQ I struggled a lot, I even did 3 versions. However, at the end, Ken was able to help me by explaining what I actually had to do, since I’d misunderstood the purpose of the assignment.
Here’s the link to my final code: https://github.com/valeriact/tc1017/blob/master/wsq12-3.cpp
And the list of resources (pretty big):
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(mathematical_constant)
- http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/46388/
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5907031/printing-the-correct-number-of-decimal-points-with-cout
- http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/HistTopics/e_10000.html
- https://bytes.com/topic/c/answers/842805-using-variable-power
- http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cmath/round/
- http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/cmath/pow/
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8690567/setting-an-int-to-infinity-in-c
- https://www.intmath.com/exponential-logarithmic-functions/calculating-e.php
- Ken’s help
- How To Think Like a Computer Scientist
The most important ones are in bold.
-Valeria
Final Project pt. 1
Today I gathered with Damián to work on the project and we decided that we wanted to change it, since we have too little time and it was really complicated to do the physical glove. So we decided to do a tic tac toe, which consists of only programming, and that we’ll do it with c++.
We began programming, deciding whether to use vectors, chars, etc. Today we got done the display and the input (we’re still missing to mark fail when the user inputs a string). We’ll continue working on that omorrow and once that’s done, we’ll figure out how to make a loop that constantly checks for a winner.
Here’s the link to the file on my GitHub: https://github.com/valeriact/tc1017/blob/master/project.cpp
And a list of the resources we’ve used so far:
- How To Think Like a Computer Scientist
- http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/beginner/28938/
-Valeria
«Tic-Tac-toe» flickr photo by realeyez https://flickr.com/photos/realeyez/506773807 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license
Go Bananas
For this assignment I created the function find_banana(), which received a string, like Ken asked. In the main I opened the .txt file, converted everything to lower case and then called find_banana(). I used nested conditionals and nested loops. Here’s my code with everything explained, feel free to ask me if you have questions!
https://github.com/valeriact/tc1017/blob/master/wsq11.cpp
Resources:
- https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3867890/count-character-occurrences-in-a-string
- How To Think Like a Computer Scientist
-Valeria
Valeria CT 