SLOG 3

What advice would you give to a student beginning this course about how to design a function. And how to prepare for this course?

            First of all, I would like to suggest students to make sure that you are familiar with the basic codes and function before you start to design a function in a project. Always go to class and keep trying to type codes by your own and play with them. So probably you could lay a solid foundation for designing functions. Secondly, beginners should not overcomplicate things, and go step by step. You may try to draw flowcharts to help you to construct functions, because sometimes you have to use codes that you studied couple of months ago, so this would be really beneficial. In the end, you can try your best to use all of your resources, including your TAs, friends, previous notes, and Internet, but never except people to do the work for you though.

            To prepare for this course, you have to have a logical mind and some imagination. Even so, you still have to go to class, and focus on the notes after class, and try to practice codes before quiz and tests. The tests are no as easy as quiz, you have to integrate theory with practice to overcome them. For the projects, you have to think deeply to reach high grades. Also, you should never procrastinate, and never leave the project in the end. When you get a project, just look it over and start it right way, so you would have time to use available resources to solve the problem. In conclusion, this is not a difficult course, just have confidence and be ready for everything.

CSC104 SLOG 2

CSC104 SLOG 2

            Before I have started to study for my first test, firstly I organized my study space and make sure I have all of my notes ready, and got rid of all distractions. Also, I have set out a timetable for my study, so I felt confidence and patient because I gave myself enough time to go through everything. Secondly, I started to read notes from our website, and try to type any codes that I was not quite sure about. After I felt good with those basic notes and codes, I started to practice on past tests from the last four years. I believe the most effective way to prepare for tests is to practicing taking past versions. This helped me to be familiar with the questions because there was something that I have not seen before on the tests. Hence, I timed myself, so I could also practice for making sure I spend the right amount of time on each types of questions. Then, I organized a study groups with my friends. We were asking questions and explaining answers to each others. One day before the test, I tried to relax myself, and went through the notes once again.

            I really enjoyed creating the “ying-yang” picture by using functions from one of the past tests. This was interesting because we used to make simple pictures when we were learning how to create pictures in the beginning. When I was studying for the test, I realized that I have to go deeper, and I was proud when I found that I could actually do better. The first project was hard in the beginning, because it was long and looks intimidating. I took my time to read and try to type codes. It took a long time but I found it was actually easy when I have tried couple of times.

            I would like to ask questions in tutorial, but I have trouble doing so, because TAs are busy for our quiz, but it is the best chance to meet TAs. So, I think the best way is asking my classmates or I can just go to the TA office hours.

SLOG 1

Guangyi Xu

1003069948

xuguang1

Oct 14, 2016

CSC104 SLOG 1

            It is commonly believed that the Internet industry is gradually replacing the Traditional sectors, especially in China. For example, the convenient and efficient online to offline E-commerce is taking over more and more market shares from traditional retail markets, and giant Chinese group Alibaba is the largest customer to customer and business to customer E-commerce firm in the world now. As for as I am concerned, advanced programmers are playing an increasingly important role in all aspects of our life, and programming has greatly facilitated people’s lives. Hence, I decided to learn programming in university to help me to enhance my competitiveness. CSC104 is a good course for beginners just like me, and I hope I can learn the rudiments of programming, and lay the foundation for my future.

            Before I learnt this course, I expected programming would be more about learning languages, and how to communicate with the machine. However, based on my experience in this course so far, I think programming is more about logic, and how to pour human’s intelligence into machines by typing simple codes. I am a poor skilled programmer so far, so I do not find programming is as fun as video games or basketball, but actually I find it a lot of fun, I mean when I was playing with those codes but my program was not running and I was debugging for an hour then hit control+A and then control+V again and finally it worked. I do not find this course is as hard as I thought so far. However, it is hard to think like a computer, because I am a ESL student and I am unfamiliar grammar rules and syntax, also there are many new set of words I have never seen.

            When I study for quizzes, firstly I will go through the notes from our website, then I will type codes from the review. Finally, I will play with the codes while learning. I also ask for help from my friends if I need it. However, I am not very satisfied with my performance on those quizzes. I was unfamiliar with this new skill yet, and I have confidence because programming takes years to learn, I think I would be better. I am very interested in quantum computing, and I think it would be the future and human’s next technology revolution.