Homework One

In CS1121, we will have five "big" programs to write for the semester as homework assignments. The first was assigned not too long ago and will be due this Friday at 10PM. I got a small start on it pretty much right away, which is a good start for the CS guy, as my OTL said that we probably wouldn't start on our stuff til last minute, which would not be good. I'm making decent progress so far; I'm pretty happy with what I've been able to do.
*edit*
I totally ended up finishing it and submitting it as of Monday night. Yay!

We didn't really have many good Pops Gems last lecture, so in lieu of that feature, I can tell you of some funny CS related stuff that's happened to me or that I've done.

I was playing Cards Against Humanity with some friends just last night. I was the Card Czar, and I was judging the card, "Instead of coal, Santa now brings the naughty children ______." I ended up choosing something because of its sheer terribleness, but a close second was "The Sun's Harsh Light," which was played by a fellow CS major.

A nice time-killer for me is making hypothetical computer builds. I go to newegg.com and put together a Wish List with all of the parts for a build. Usually make builds comparable to well-known high-end PCs. Once, not too long ago, I did a Mac build that came out to be about $1500 less, I believe, than the retail cost. Yay PC building!

Finally a link I Stumbled Upon. Oh computers, how you frustrate us.

Lab 3

This week in the lab, I was forced to work with a partner. In lab 2, my partner for this week and I raced to get all of the problems done, and we both got done in about an hour and fifteen minutes (yes, he beat me by about ten seconds). This week, we got all but one question done in about an hour, then the last problem took us the last hour of the lab. It may have taken us til literally the last minute, but we were triumphant! As I was adding the last change, I literally said, "This is going to be the last thing we do, and it's going to work, and we are going to party." We typed in the 1121labtest command, hit lab 3, problem 28, and it was correct, and we both kind of yelled, "YES." We partied on our way to the lecture.

Lecture (Sept. 13)

This official lecture on if statements and the like was interesting and entertaining, like the other lectures by Pops so far. He prefaced the lecture with a YouTube clip (this time it was Annoying Orange) and told us to send him links to YouTube videos to begin the classes, which made me happy. I understood a lot of the topics he discussed already; they seemed pretty straightforward to me. The only thing I didn't really get, switches, he told us at the end that we don't even need to know, so that's good. Looking forward to the lecture on loops!

Gems from Pops:
"I had a very bad experience with these operators [++ and --] as a child, so I avoid them."
"You can do it your own way, but you better know what you're doing." Pops on optional curly braces
"He's dead now, by the way...so you can't complain to him..." Pops on Dennis Ritchie, creator of C

The First Actual Lab!

I had my first actual lab on Thursday, September 13. This was the first lab involving a bunch of problems that they told you and a partner to solve. Do it. This particular lab I didn't have much issue with. I sat next to a guy I knew from Perspectives and, while not actually working together officially, we collaborated and asked each other different questions as the time went by. Once we finished, a TA said that we were the fastest ones to complete the lab, clocking in at an hour and fifteen minutes.

Chapter 3

As I was doing the reading for chapter 3 in our Pearson Custom Computer Science book, it seemed to all make sense to me. The chapter was on Selections (if statements, not, and, or, exclusive or, switches), and I thought everything was fairly straightforward, at least to me. I started on the CodeLab problems, and everything was going quite well. I was able to easily do all of the problems except for one involving a switch statement. The problem was to display a message if a number under 10 was prime, a different one if it wasn't, and another if the number entered was 10 or higher. For some reason, I could not for the life of me figure out how to get the 10 or higher one to work, as I couldn't say something like case >= 10 (if the number was greater than or equal to two) because that only works with true/false (Boolean) statements. Eventually, I realized that there's a special case called "default," which the program looks at if none of your previous cases are satisfied. I am a proud noob programmer right now. Lab and lecture tomorrow, expect more from me!

Day 2 of Lecture

So today, we continued to learn the very basics of Java, such as variables, looking for input, things of that nature. I'm really enjoying using a laptop to take notes in CS1121 because any example code that Pops puts up, I can type it up as if I was actually writing a Java program, or if I felt like it, I could actually type it into Eclipse and manipulate it to see what happens. And for anyone who might be thinking, "Hey, doesn't Michigan Tech have wireless internet throughout the campus? So aren't you tempted to go do something else on the internet?" my answer is, "Well, no, not really." I can stop myself from browsing mostly because I'm actually interested in the class and want to learn the information. Most of my other classes, for one reason or another, don't really interest me, so having Intro to Java twice a week and then a lab will be a nice break from boredom.

Some gems from Pops this past lecture:
"Variables are called variables because they vary!"
"If you don't put your paper in a neat pile, you will be shot! Your names are on them; I know who you are!"

Hello World!

Beginning CS 1121, I didn't know what to expect. My first impression of Pops was a good one, as he seemed funny in an odd, but likable way. I'm currently typing this during my scheduled lab period, as I finished the first lab assignment in about a half hour. The first actual lecture is in about fourty minutes, so I'll report back afterwards and we'll see what I think then. I'm actually quite excited to see what this class has in store for me, as I'm pretty much completely inexperienced as far as formal training goes.