Hello fellow survivors!
I'd like to transport you back to Week 4, and to my post cleverly entitled "So Far, So Good". At this point, I was feeling pretty good about how the semester was going. Of course this was before the disaster that was the TA strike and Assignment 2 (yes, I associate both of those events to be equivalently as horrible and tramatisizing).
I'd like to quote myself: "I hope this post doesn't jinx all that." Well, past Anisha, I hope you're happy because you did jinx it, you've jinx'd everything. It was after this post that we began the rollercoaster of emotions that was recursion (first interested, then depressed, then incrediblly proud, then assignment 2 and thus hate, then assignment 3 and thus happiness). It was after this post that Assignment 2 became a thing (is it becoming clear to anyone else how much I hate assignment 2?).
But it wasn't all bad. Assignment 3 actually takes me back to the same passive, netural-ness that caused the week 4 post. What I mean by that is I enjoyed Assignment 3 so much that it balanced out my hatred of Assignment 2, which is amazing.
On the other hand, my feelings or relief, exhurbance, and pride, that I described in Week 4 has only gotton worse. Or better. Either way, my point is that when I get something in this course, I just have this incredible high, which is actually a bit pathetic considering there are probably many people who do not find this material as challenging as I do. But that's okay because at least I usually do get it (except Assignment 2, but let's not talk about that).
Studying for written tests is still not fun, but I'm a bit more sympathtic as to its necessity to this course. Now I feel that perhaps one of the two midterms should be written and the other done on computers. And while, I regognize the difficulty of doing an online test, I feel that it is still worth it because it is a clearer indication of our abilities.
Overall, not much has changed, though I feel as though I personally have grown. (Ugh, the cliche of that, I apologize.)
Feeling slightly embrassed about the coloquialness of my previous posts (and this post),
- Anisha Rohra
Friday, March 27, 2015
Sunday, March 1, 2015
I DID IT! (Week 8)
Last week brought great excitement for me because I was able to successfully code the lab's recursive code without too much trouble. Granted, it wasn't particularly difficult, but it was still a shining moment for me because of the difficulty that I've had with recursion. Both my understanding of how it works and my inability to come up with that additional required function to code it (minimax).
On the plus side, I think I'm getting better. And gradually realizing just how convinent it is to compared to non-recursive code. I was thinking as I wrote the code for the lab, that while some of the code could have been easier to write without recursion, it would have been longer and more unecessary. As Danny puts it, the code is deeper but significantly shorter, and intuitively it feels more effecient. I suppose I'll learn whether it is actually more effecient when we cover that unit in class.
What else did we do last week? Me and my partner started Assignment 2. I don't know how I feel about the fact that we're going to be spending hours (hours!) coding such a simple game; yes part of it is because we're using classes and recursion, and really the point is not the game. I just wish we had a little more that indicates the sheer amount of time this stuff requires. Hopefully future compsci courses will have something more satisfying (no offence to anyone who may be reading this!).
Otherwise though, this is proving to very difficult. Minimax is hard to wrap the mind around, let alone code, and reading the code for SubtractSquareState provided to us and comparing it to what we did on Assignment 1 is really a blow to the ego. But this is a learning process. Though I will say, I appreciate that there isn't one fixed way to do something and I feel validated in disagreeing with some of the more stylistic choices made by the professors. What I'm getting at is that I feel computer science and these assignments in particular involve quite a bit of individuality, and as a humanities-minded person, I greatly enjoy that.
That's all for now, folks!
- Anisha Rohra
On the plus side, I think I'm getting better. And gradually realizing just how convinent it is to compared to non-recursive code. I was thinking as I wrote the code for the lab, that while some of the code could have been easier to write without recursion, it would have been longer and more unecessary. As Danny puts it, the code is deeper but significantly shorter, and intuitively it feels more effecient. I suppose I'll learn whether it is actually more effecient when we cover that unit in class.
What else did we do last week? Me and my partner started Assignment 2. I don't know how I feel about the fact that we're going to be spending hours (hours!) coding such a simple game; yes part of it is because we're using classes and recursion, and really the point is not the game. I just wish we had a little more that indicates the sheer amount of time this stuff requires. Hopefully future compsci courses will have something more satisfying (no offence to anyone who may be reading this!).
Otherwise though, this is proving to very difficult. Minimax is hard to wrap the mind around, let alone code, and reading the code for SubtractSquareState provided to us and comparing it to what we did on Assignment 1 is really a blow to the ego. But this is a learning process. Though I will say, I appreciate that there isn't one fixed way to do something and I feel validated in disagreeing with some of the more stylistic choices made by the professors. What I'm getting at is that I feel computer science and these assignments in particular involve quite a bit of individuality, and as a humanities-minded person, I greatly enjoy that.
That's all for now, folks!
- Anisha Rohra
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