Final Post

This year in AP computer science I enjoyed working on recursion and arraylists. While recursion problems were not fun to trace in quizzes, they were really fun to write. It was really cool to see how much of the problem you could solve without any loops. Learning recursion through cargo bot was really fun, and an interesting way to visualize how recursion worked. Learning how the stack worked was probably the hardest concept of recursion to grasp and cargo bot was a great way to visualize the stack. arraylists were not particularly fun but after learning arrays they were a wonderful relief. I don’t know why arrays are just eliminated and we only use arraylists because they are so convenient and have so many methods. I did not like working with grid world or trying to make pong. Both of these were incredibly complicated programs. Grid world was hard just because I didn't understand how all the different methods and actors worked. I also was never able to test the methods or classes that I wrote because I didn't know where I was supposed to write them so that they would take effect when I ran grid world. Making pong was just frustrating because there were so many different classes and interfaces and I could not keep it all straight. Maybe in the future there could be a comment at the top of each class that says what it does instead of having to read through all the code and trying to figure it out. Next year I would not change much. I really did feel completely prepared for the AP test when I took it, despite the fact that i may not have had enough practice. though i did have plenty of opportunity to practice. I think that we should have been required to take at least one of the practice tests in addition to the mock ap. I feel that this would have helped me be more prepared for the time aspect of the test. Another thing that would have help me a lot this year is if the worksheets were available to print online. i understand that there are copywriter issues but maybe if they were accessible on a password protected document? I do miss the TED talks and world tech updates but they’re not critical to the class. Maybe I would make It so that we cover arrays before we cover string modifications. And I would cover strings for a longer period of time just because this year and in computer programming that was the hardest thing for me to learn. I liked it when we we were given several labs to choose from. i think that this would be a better way to run the majority of the year. I also liked it better when we had multiple labs on the same topic that we were required to do because I always felt confident in that topic afterwards. Overall it was a pretty good year.

Week 7 (week of 02/25/13)

this week i got more done on my computer at home than i got done in class. i worked on the sorting efficiency lab and the digit sort lab. the sorting efficiency lab was pretty easy, although it was pretty annoying that the large list always took super long even though i knew my program worked on the smaller lists. the digit sort lab was difficult at first, but once i figured out how to convert the integers into lists of digits, the lab was pretty simple because all i had to do was look up the presentation on how to make an insertion sort.

Week 6 (week of 02/18/13)

This week we mostly just took the six weeks exam. I had a hard time with the multiple choice because i was distracted with events that happened the lunch period just before. Still, i ended up not finishing the multiple choice and will have to do corrections to make it up.

Week 5 (week of 02/04/13)

This week we worked on abstract classes and interfaces. At first I didn't understand it very well. I tried the worksheets and was completely lost. Then I talked to Mr. Stevens and he made it so much easier. Now I understand that abstract methods are ideas and not a whole lot of actual code. they are skeletons for sets of classes that require lots of the same methods.

Week 4 (week of 01/28/13)

This week I learned about single inheritance and multiple inheritance. we used these skills to work on pong. I find pong really confusing with complex nonlinear instructions. I am also having trouble with pong because i dont fully understand how object classes should be written or how they function. my problem with object classes is in the constructor and initialization methods. i dont know what is supposed to be put there and when i need to have them or what their purposes are. i think once i know their purpose and what goes in them then i will have no trouble figuring out when and how to use them.

Week 3 (week of 01/21/13)

I missed this entire week of computer science due to a trip to see the presidential inauguration and tour new york.

Week 2 (week of 01/14/13)

This week we continued work on ArrayLists. array lists are pretty easy, with their only difference being that they are instantiated differently and have more tools. This week we also learned about OOPs. these are object oriented programming concepts. Essentially we learned more about concepts we have already covered. the labs for OOP seem pretty easy, especially after learning about ArrayLists.

New Semester Week 1(Week of 01/07/13)

This week I got back from winter break. We spent a day on review in computer science. The review was interesting and pretty fun. The rest of the week we were introduced to array lists. array list seem to me like they are the same thing as arrays just with more properties and look a little different when you print them using the toString method. However I lost focus during the presentation so I may have missed a crucial detail. I will speak with mister stevens about this on tuesday.