Can't get enough of those apps

Just the other day I saw a TED talk that made me think about my own programming class. This talk featured a very young kid who happens to be an established iOS app programmer. He  talked about how  people often ask him about his apps, hoping for tips on how to actually create an app. His observation is that many people want to learn how to program apps, but don't know exactly where to start.

I was thinking that somehow, someway, we could incorporate mobile-device app-programming into the class. Though I know close to nothing about this sort of programming (go figure), I'm sure we could work through the basics and eventually develop a polished product.

-zk : out

Master Code

Some recent labs with Jeroo made me think about something. Lately, i've been plowing through the labs, and of course they've been getting progressively harder to solve. My initial instinct for any problem is to create a master solution, a code that would complete the task even if the details of the situation are changed. Intuitively, this seems to be the most practical way of doing things, but is there ever a point at which this is unnecessary? I mean, I could easily just hammer out a set of instructions that would complete the task and probably still earn credit for doing so. I can imagine that my teacher would advise against this, for obvious reasons. As a learning programmer, I want to improve on my problem-solving skills, and I guess the path to doing so is based on challenging myself.  

loops vs. methods

This week in computer science my class learned how to use loops and methods with Jeroo. My impressions of methods are positive, since they really helped me condense the lines of code that would otherwise be ridiculously long. Loops, on the other hand, are different. They make sense, given that we worked with them on Scratch, but I haven't really used them in-depth yet. I imagine that I will be able to combine loops and methods later on to solve more difficult problems. Though the labs are still fairly easy, I'm still learning the basics of Jeroo, before they start to increase in difficulty.

-zk : out

Jeroo is what's new

This week my class decided to move in a new direction with programming and begin Jeroo as preparation for Python later on. Jeroo allows the user to control the little animal around to complete tasks using Python. So far, it isn't that difficult at all, because the first labs only required me to endlessly type hop, hop, turn, etc. without the use of loops or anything like that. I can say, with utmost confidence, that I have the basics of Jeroo down, and I would like to move on to more advanced topics.

Jeroo, at least from my viewpoint, is only a puzzle. It doesn't seem to have any practical use, since the programming only pertains to solving problems in the virtual version of Satong Island, the home of Jeroos. Yet I think Jeroo will prove to useful later on when I move on to other programming, because it requires a lot of logic-based thinking.

-zk : out