Slog Week 12: Last Impressions

Last Impressions

Just finished assignment 3 yesterday, this assignment was fun. Compared to the three assignments in this course, this is my favorite one. Thinking of the impression of these assignments, the first one I felt confused, the second one I struggled a lot though I finished them eventually and the third one was the one I enjoyed working on it most since I got adequate time to do and it was not very difficult.

Meanwhile, when reading about myself talking about assignment 2, I found out that the way that I tried to approach a2 at first but found out it was wrong later, it turned out to be the things happened in a3. In the option b of assignment 3, all the function needs recursion, though some of it can also be done without recursion but in a more complex way and needs lots of code to do. A3 to me is an easier assignment compared to a2 since it was shorter and though it took me some while to think some of the recursive functions, I didn’t find them very difficult to implement.

Overcoming Conceptual Hurdles:

I usually read slides and code posted on course website after class and they solve most of the problems I have, so I have no difficulties with the most of the concepts taught in class. However, there was time that I still don’t understand those concepts after reading slides and code, and I will read the course notes, which is also posted on course page, but it stopped updating since the exception part. At the same time, another way is that going to piazza to see if anyone asked question or post a new question or going to office hour if possible to have a more clear and detailed explanations. These ways always help clear out all the confusion I have.

Also, do not fall behind and only try to catch up when the exam is coming, though  this is what I did in some other courses. This course requires understanding concepts a lot, so trying to understanding everything all at once is always difficult.

Overall, I had a really great experience with this course. Although some of the things such as assignment and lab in this course is challenging and require lots of work, I felt a sense of proud when they were completed. After taking this course, my programming skills and computational thinking have improved a lot. I want to thank Danny, I love the way he teaches and he has been a great prof who is patient answering the questions I asked. And I also appreciate the instructors, the students and the TAs who answered questions on piazza in a speed faster than lightening.

Slog Week 11: Revisiting Earlier Slog and Classmates’ Slogs

Revisiting earlier slogs makes me realize how I struggled with assignments especially the second one and always making stupid mistakes in tests. At the same time, it is interesting to read myself describing the first experience with computer lab, making a game and so on. Other than that, I also talked about the concepts in class and my understanding of those concepts does not change mostly.

By reading my slog, I realize that in this semester we spent most of the time on recursion. At first, we learned the concept of recursion and how to keep track of some simple example such as summing a list; then we began writing basic recursions. As tree and binary search tree were introduced, we moved on to more complex recursion. So a great portion of the content in this course is about recursion.

I visited some classmates’ slogs and found out some of them have a really great description on concepts that we learned.

http://celinajiangslog148.blogspot.ca

Celina’s describe many concepts in great details clearly with some pictures. When I was writing about object-orientated programming, I didn’t know how to start so I decided to read other people’s slogs first, then I found Celina’s slog. Her writing on object-oriented programming helped me understand the topic much better and inspired me ideas on how to write on this topic.

Just found out the pictures for tree traversals that she posted are the same as mine. Maybe we both visited Wikipedia and used the pictures on there.

http://csc148riya.blogspot.ca

Love the pictures posted on her slogs and sometimes her slog is fun to read. When talking about assignments and tests, we have the same opinion. I totally agree with her point when she says “Why is it that you only remember the stupid mistakes you made after you have left the room”.

http://christiangarciacsc148.blogspot.ca
From Christian’s posts, it looks like he has a good understanding on course content and wrote very detailed posts explaining it. Also, he always keeps track of peers’ interaction on each topic and gives useful advice on how to master some of it.

Slog Week 10: Impression of week 9: Term test 2 and Binary Search Tree Functions

Term test 2 and Binary Search Tree Functions

The difficulty of term test 2 is similar to test 1. I would say test 2 was not very difficult but I realized right after walking out Exam Centre that I made a very stupid mistake. I misunderstood the first question on the greatest height of a tree and did it wrong, which made me upset, but other than this, everything should be fine. The other two questions are about LinkedList and BTNode, which are very similar to the labs we did. At the same time, I am so grateful that we could bring a cheat sheet to the exam, or I would have run out of time trying to build the functions on the second and third question since 50 minutes was not enough for me to finish the test without a cheat sheet.

Saw the link on Python assert statement in this week’s reading, planning on reading this later. When I went to Prof Danny’s office hour during assignment 2 to fix my code, he used assert to debug the code for me, so I think this would be an useful tool for debugging.

In last week’s lecture, two recursive functions insert and delete were mentioned and the lab of week 9 also requires implementing these two functions.

Insert: insert data in binary search tree and return new root. Insert will ensure this is a binary search tree.

Delete: walks through a binary search tree to delete a node if exists and return resulting tree.

Because of the test, only one hour of lecture is presented in this week, so there is not much new to learn.