Week #3 : Why geeks should write

Why geeks should write: 

I would argue that everyone should be able to write well. Writing in an effective and clear manner is invaluable in the workforce. In most jobs you'll need to make presentations or write reports. If one's report or presentation is well constructed, clear and as engaging as possible it will save both you and the reader time. If it is poorly constructed it will take the reader longer to find the information they need. If it is not clear they will spend unnecessary time trying to figure out what you meant, and potentially need to come to you for clarifications which wastes both of your time. Finally if it is not engaging the reader will be less likely to read it thoroughly and try to get through it as quickly as possible which could cause them to not absorb the information you're trying to present. 

While everyone should have good writing skills it is especially important for us geeks. Take doc strings. If yours is poorly written then the client will have trouble understanding what your methods and functions actually do. Secondly, I find good writing skills and good oral communication skills go pretty much hand in hand and a good geek needs be able to explain their theories and work effectively in both ways in order to be successful. Its no good being brilliant if no one understands what you did and can't use whatever you built. 

Slog Week #2

I'm writing this having just had my first lab. The assignment was pretty straightforward in easy except for one speed bump I had. I didn't realize initially that for __init__ you didn't have to type arguments in order to store data. What I mean is that I did not know you could do this :

So I was doing this:

It was initially pretty frustrating until I figured it out because it bothered me that whomever was using my class would not be able to add on to lists, for example, right away. They would have to create them first and then add on which I thought would just be tedious. Needless to say, when I figured that out I was both excited and felt like an idiot. 

Other than that little hiccup the lab went well. I think I got the quiz question right, however I think I could improve on my docstrings. My description was a little long and clunky. 

SLOG Week #1

SLOG Week #1

So it begins, the first SLOG post of many. Firstly, hello to whomever is reading this, I hope you enjoy this post and I'll try not to ramble (my main issue when it comes to writing). 

So far my impressions of this class are really good (and I'm not just saying that because I know the teaching staff is reading). The professor seems really nice and I thought it was nice how she made us introduce ourselves to our seat neighbours as before that I didn't know anyone in the class. I'm not saying this just to suck up but in my first year I honestly haven't met a computer science professor that wasn't likeable.

I've started on chapter one of the course readings. The language in the notes is pretty easy to comprehend and I found that my usual method of tackling readings (reading and then writing down notes, and then going over those notes highlighting the important parts), is working and I'm absorbing the information pretty well.

At section 1.1 I got super distracted because I'd never used the turtle class before and it's ridiculously fun to play with. I spent about an hour messing around with it before getting back to the course readings. 

Section 1.2 introduced abstract data types (ADTs) which were a little hard to wrap my head around initially but after reading the description carefully a couple times and trying to explain it in my own words I got it. The example of stacks really helped me a lot. I found it was a lot easier to explain ADTs to myself in the context of stacks.

In class I didn't have much difficulty understanding the lectures. The concepts are pretty easy for me right now, which makes sense as it is the beginning of the year so that's usually when the concepts are the easiest.
My biggest issue right now is probably that I don't remember all the vocabulary from last semester. It was easy to get by without learning it so I only really have a rough grasp of the technical terms. For example, parsing. I completely knew what it was and how to use it but I just did not know the proper name for it. Same thing with the word "delimiter". To solve this problem I've started to look up and write down the definitions of words I don't recognize that are used in the readings and in class and I'm learning them reasonably quickly.