Files

I honestly don't have much of anything to say about writing to and reading from files. Its almost the exact same thing as it is in python, and it was easy then, too. The only other thing that we had this week was the loops quiz, I think, which didn't end up being very difficult by virtue of my need to check every question about five times just to make sure I didn't misread the problem. OCD-like obsession with making absolutely sure that you've understood the problem perfectly is useful on our quizzes, but its less than helpful when there's a time limit.

For Loops

I'm so glad that we changed the deal lab from while loop to for loop. I don't like while loops that much, and having to do that lab without being able to use for loops would have been fairly frustrating. Its so much more convenient to use for loops in most situations, so being able to use them in labs from now on is going to be nice. Its like what happened with else statements when we were only using if statements. It was so tempting to just use them, but I didn't in an effort to keep with the spirit of the lab or codingbat exercise.

If/Else Statements

Its so tempting to just nest them forever! I mean, I know there are plenty of efficient ways of doing the same thing that I'm doing in my code, but just nesting if loops until the problem goes away just feels easier to me. So long as I don't mess up with my braces or my indentation (which I don't, ever), it works out fine for me. Once we run into a genuinely complex program I'm sure that I'll be forced to snap out of it, but for now its a bit of a struggle.

Six Weeks Exam

This is my first computer science exam of the year, and I thought it worked out pretty well. I'm not sure I like writing down code, but you have to do it for the exam so it is probably for the best that we start getting ready for it. It feels so clumsy compared to typing, and I'm always worried that I've done something wrong or missed something. I didn't have any problems with the multiple choice, except that some of the questions or answers had typos or errors of some kind. Still, I liked the exam over all.