Some Deliberations Concerning the Month of January

-D31, M01, Y15-

Welcome back! Something may feel different since the last time you were here--presuming you have been here before. What could it possibly be? The entire display has been revamped. That's what it is. No, I will not be focusing my future blog posts upon the topic of the Medieval Ages (although that is quite tempting); however, I will be taking the time today to speak of my experience so far in my computer science course.

+ First off, I was tasked with creating not only a text-based Python game, but also with creating the game environment in which the game--and others similar to it--could be played. For those with minimal programming experience, think of it as creating the Main Menu screen of a 3-in-1 game and then making one of the 3 games.
I must say, it was quite challenging to do alone. I have had experience creating games in the past; however, those did not require object-oriented programming. At least, not in as direct a way as was required for this assignment.
All in all, I feel as though I should make an effort to work with a partner in future assignments, not merely to help distribute the workload, but to possibly understand what it means to work as a team on a single project. Not many programmers work alone, so obtaining some experience--and possibly more programming friends--would be a good idea.

+ Second, Recursion. Wow. Basically, create a function and then use that function inside its own code. It drives me nuts. Yes, I have no trouble tracing through recursion code...but when tasked with creating one that does nothing more than return the largest list length out of an argument that is a list of a list of a list of integers...NO. Nothing I attempted worked. The fact that it calls itself within itself is just preposterous. How do you keep track of all those lists if the function calls itself after taking note of one list in order to deal with a list inside the previous list?
See? I don't. I intend to research this further unless more is taught in class.

+ And third, I am somewhat put off by the style of teaching. A large amount of it revolves around teaching concepts through showing examples of code in class in combination with online course notes. For some reason, it does not really feel like learning. Now of course, there is a probability that this is a good thing--that I am enjoying what I am learning. I loath the idea that I should base how much I have learned upon how well I do on future tests; but the educational system in place presently leaves me little choice. Regardless, I intend to put my knowledge and skills to work after the semester ends by creating game apps for Android as a more competent way of assessing what I have learned.

Thank you for reading.