Final Post!!!!!!!

As the title suggests, this will be my last blog post for this class, ever. Of course, I will be probably posting more stuff next year for my AP comp sci class, since I decided to go a little further with programming in school.

Anyways, I'd like reflect upon the class. First of all, I will say that I learned a lot. When I first showed up, I knew close to nothing about computer programming. This class really helped to introduce me to some of the concepts that show up in the field of computer programming. I don't know if I will ever include comp sci in my studies after high school, though, but I'm sure it will help me in other areas.
In the beginning of the year, we worked on scratch, which seems extremely easy in comparison to python. I feel like scratch was a good choice to start out with, because of the easy block-style programming. We didn't spend a huge portion of the year on scratch, probably cause we couldn't stop drawing useless shapes and figure instead of being productive. While in scratch, we only studied the most basic concepts in programming, but I think we could have included more complicated subjects, too, such as booleans, variables, etc. If I had started working with those earlier, I think python would have been a lot easier to figure out.
I also liked our unit with jeroo, but it was a little long. It is still necessary in my mind, because it gave me practice with python and creating algorithms, but I think we could've learned something else in the period, too. But overall, jeroo was a very unique and fun way of learning some of the basics of python.
After that, we went straight into python. This represents some of the hard programming of the course, because it required everything that we had learned previously in the course. Hopefully the things I learned with python will help in java, which is the language I will be using later in AP comp sci. At the beginning of the year, I also recall going over binary and the basics of computer hardware. I found this unit very refreshing, although I think we could have done more with computer hardware. As I said earlier in one of my blog posts last semester, an interesting class project would be to build a class computer with parts lying around the school. Having first-hand experience myself, I know that building a computer is not as daunting as it may seem. I know that many people had trouble with the quizzes, especially those over python. At least to me, the quizzes seemed to be more of a test over one's ability to decipher convoluted and seemingly useless blocks of code, with a few direct questions about the subject matter thrown in. I'm not sure what everyone else thinks about this, though. In general, I enjoyed most of the labs, but a few were particularly annoying. But I guess computer science can be that way, since most of the time is spent debugging programs.

- zk : out

App Inventor

So I am continuing to make apps with app inventor. Its pretty fun. After all, I am making an actual app that could be of some use in the real world. Compared to python , making apps really easy. Even with the instruction that explicitly tell me what to do, the block-style programming also adds another level of intuition. The whole interface, made buy MIT, makes designing and programming almost worry free, because I don't have to worry about syntax and calculations for designing. Considering that the final project will be created on app inventor, I need to actually pay attention to how it works, instead of just following the instructions...Anyways, the school year is almost over, and I can't wait.

- zk : out 

AP WEEK and other stuff

This is it. This is the week in which I practically finish my hardest classes. But once I am done, however, I will be free. Thankfully, I'm only taking 3 AP tests, unlike others who have to worry about more of them. Anyways, back to my humble role in computer science where our class is beginning to work on a new project. In place of Python, we will be developing Android apps using a developer supported by MIT. Although, I don't actually have an Android device, it will still be interesting to be able to make my own app. The interface seems to be friendly and intuitive, similar to that of Scratch, as it utilizes that "drag and drop" style of programming. It is nice to start something different.

- zk : out

[dictionary,matrices,ect.]

Lately in computer science we have been learning a lot about different types of data structures like lists, matrices, dictionaries, and tuples. While I appreciate the versatility and unique qualities that each structure has, it is becoming harder to remember all the specifics for each one. Seriously, lab 10 gave me a run for my money, because we still had to use lists. In the future, learning something else would be nice. Hopefully, the final doesn't require many of these.... Otherwise, lists are pretty cool.

AP's are coming up next week. It would be awesome if Mr.Stevens lightened the workload so I can study some.

- zk : out