The Blog Postiest

Well, here’s the school year almost done, same as it did last year. All in all, I think that this class was fun, as much as I could be motivated to do much of anything through the creeping fog of senioritis clouding my brain. In many ways, I thought it was very similar to the latter half of computer programming last year, but with java as opposed to python, but in the end they were very different classes, and the way that one transitioned into the other was well done. Back in computer programming, we spent almost the entire year without really programming, simply working with scratch or jeroo. Not that that wasn't fun, mind, but it wasn't really using a programming language, except for the butchered, twisted incarnation of python that was jeroo’s instructions. In this class, though, almost all of our time was spent on actual programming, without sacrificing the focus on the algorithms and theory behind the code. We were learning the code, the physical words and notations that allowed the computer to complete its goals, but we did so as a framing device for the ideas that programming is founded on, and in doing so didn’t just learn the basics, just enough to scrape by on the AP, but actually understood what we were doing. I think that cargo bot helped with that. I’m not saying that you should use it in every single programming class ever, but that’s exactly what I’m saying. I also appreciated the switch to allowing us to work on the labs in partners, rather than alone, because it let me dump all of the work on my partner and just sleep in class. Kidding, of course. It was actually mainly useful for getting a different perspective. I might be trying to think my way through some snag on a lab, when suddenly my partner just comes up with the solution that works without any bugs, and with about a fifth of the code. It’s just useful to have someone else to look at your code and tell you precisely why you are a moron that shouldn’t be allowed to touch a computer with a ten foot pole, is all. Other than that, I don’t have too much to say about this year in particular. I felt that I was prepared well for the AP, there weren’t any problems where I just had to sit there and stare at it because I didn’t have the first idea what to do, or any concepts on the test that just stumped me. The only real problem was with the time, with me finishing off the last multiple choice questions as the timer counted down. The free response, though, was pretty trivially short, so I didn’t have any real problems there. They really ought to switch the times around for those two sections. So, overall, the class was a good, in depth look at the mechanics of java and some of the theoretical underpinnings of it and programming in general, and I feel that it left my well prepared for the test. Some of the theoretical stuff, however, ended up being problematic. There would be a long, drawn out explanation of the concepts behind how java handles references, that I would get completely lost on. Feeling utterly out of my depth, I would go to do a lab or take a quiz, only to find… it was the exact same thing I had been doing all along. I’m just saying, I thought some stuff was kind of superfluous.