Program Stress!!!

Well here we go again. Once again I have put off my homework till nearly the last minute and I've done this for almost all of the programming assignments. I thought by now I would realize that getting this homework done early would prove useful to me, but apparently I never took action. Currently my program can successfully put the snake, player, and money buttons in random places on the JButton grid, but it doesn't do anything else. I realize that this program is going to involve a listener and a manager and I need to either read up on the subject or go take a visit to the learning center because I am somewhat lost on how to accomplish my tasks. If I can get this program working at least halfway correctly it puts my final grade in good shape especially with all these blogs, but I can't lose my focus on this program.

Lab Quiz 3...Success!!!

After lots of preparation for our last lab quiz on Tuesday I found that hard work really does pay off, but it wasn't easy when looking at it in the context of my scenario. Surprisingly I did very well on the question about maps as it only took about 5 minutes to complete and the first question was pretty easy as well. The second question which dealt with ArrayLists stressed me out a bit when I kept getting errors. It turns out that I was over complicating the entire problem and I just had to clear my mind and start over from scratch on that problem. The final problem actually wasn't too hard to figure out especially with my preparation, but I probably approached the problem in the most complex way imaginable. When I finished the problem I had about 200 lines of code, but the important thing is that I got that correct and got 100% on the overall quiz!

Lab Quiz 3 Preparation

This weekend I chose to be lazy and not work on the program and I am not ashamed to admit that because I actually did do something CS related that was productive. Since the third and final lab quiz is on Tuesday I thought it would be in my best interest to look over programs from the lab and comment them out to try and study for this important quiz. I mainly focused on labs 9 and 10 which was the new stuff after lab quiz 2 and commented those programs out so I could follow the entire logic flow. Although I did not go through all the labs, I was able to get a considerable amount of studying done for labs 9 and 10. On Monday and Tuesday I plan to go over the other labs.

Obscure much?....

The last few lectures have been about more obscure topic like inheritance and superclasses which rely more on understanding concepts as opposed to syntax. For some reason the extends keyword used when defining classes actually made a lot of sense to me as it simply just imports all the methods of another class into the current class. I was probably able to understand this lecture because I actually went through the book and went through all the example code in the book to be sure I understand the whole logic flow. Although homework program 5 isn't due till next Friday I plan on getting a good chunk of it done because I don't want to wait until the last minute like I did for the last two programming assignments.

THE LAST LAB!!!

Tuesday was another one of those CS filled days where I had class and then lab that evening. We did not really go through much code at all during class we basically just went through some conceptual stuff on java classes and whatnot. There was also a lecture quiz that was simpler than simple because Dr. Poplawski gave us an obvious hint to the answer, but it was still much appreciated. The lab was about graphical user interfaces and my partner and I had quite a few struggles. Setting up the GUI and giving it a size, placing objects in the window, and giving it a title was no problem whatsoever, but the code for the listener is what I struggled with. My partner and I only got through the first problem, but I still learned quite a few things about listeners. Now my next course of action is going to be studying for the lab quiz that takes place next week and I'm just gonna go through all my old labs and make sure I follow each step of the logic flow.

Upcoming game....I mean program...

As I went onto the CS1121 homepage I found that homework 5 was available and I took a gander at it. The program going to be based off the game snake and it will involve the use of graphical user interfaces and it sounds like it will be a pretty fun program to make. Being anxious to start it, I have already done a few things with the code. I have already made the JFrame and JButton objects as well as initialized the size of the frame and made the frame visible. The game itself is a grid with a specified amount of JButton objects and I have the user input the amount of rows and columns that will be used in the game and I add the JButton objects to the frame accordingly. The JButton objects have a defined size in this game, so I have made a for loop that adds all JButton objects that can possibly be added. I'm sure Dr. Poplawski will talk more about the program on Tuesday, but I thought it would be best to get a head start on it.

Program Finished!

When the lecture on Thursday ended I felt pretty confident about my program because I had written 3 of the methods and my partner had written the other 2 and the toString method. However, when we went to the CS labs after class we had to some debugging in some of the methods in order for it to store the values and cities correctly. It turns out that after only about an hour of work all the methods were as correct as I could get them to be. When I was reading over the documentation of the methods in the RouteMap class I had realized that I forgot to put the error code associations inside all the methods so I had to go through and apply those to the methods. The real problem that I faced was getting the toString method to work correctly. On Friday I spent a total of about 3 hours in the CS labs asking learning center coaches for their assistance and trying to get it to output correctly. I put forth my best effort, but I got the toString method to only partially work.

CS Tuesday/Program Progress

Today was one of my last few CS Tuesdays of the spring semester and it was a very productive one indeed. During class today Dr. Poplawski gave us our first introduction to Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) and showed us several components that we can implement into our GUI. The whole idea of Graphical User Interfaces seems very interesting because of the user-program-interactions. Tuesday night was the lab and during the lab we worked on Strings. This lab was not too overly difficult because it had us use several of the String and Character methods that were mentioned in the book. After the lab I decided that I should try and crank out my portion of the program. I think I have completed the first three methods, but I am a little confused on how the test program determines determines errors in the methods and whatnot. In the next couple days I will visit the learning center and ask them about this issue if it has not yet been resolved.

Program Started....Kinda

After a weekend of nothing but studying because of my three exams next week I didn't really get a chance to work on the homework program that much at all. I have copied the skeleton code from the homework page into eclipse and have looked at all the methods though. My partner and I met up briefly to go over which methods we are going to accomplish and since there are six methods total that we need to create, my partner and I just decided to do three methods each. The first two days of this week are going to be when my exams are and after that I plan to visit the learning center for some help because it is highly doubtful that I will be able to complete these three methods by myself. I have looked ahead in the lesson plan for the lecture and I found that we are going to learn about GUIs on Tuesday which will be pretty fun since I have worked with briefly with MATLAB and they are very interesting.

Just Another Day

Today we were taught more about Strings in class today and we also learned how to implement text files into Eclipse. I knew Java had a way to import text files and use them in a way, but it was nice to see another comparison between Java and MATLAB because I am currently using them both. I am starting to feel a bit overwhelmed with all my classes because I have three exams next week, the homework program due next Friday, and a big World Cultures assignment due next Friday. The best thing I can do is to just take everything one step at a time and try not to get ahead of myself because I will just stress myself out even more by doing that. I plan on working on the homework program this weekend and unlike two weekends ago, I will actually go to the learning center on Sunday evening to get some help because I want to understand what this program does and how exactly to go about writing it.

Its CS Tuesday!

After spending about two hours doing the CodeLab problems for today's lecture last night and getting them all correct I just knew that today was gonna be a good day. During the lecture today Dr. Poplawski talked about strings and went into more detail on what methods you could invoke to modify string variables. I followed up nicely by getting the quiz answer correct so it was a good start to the day! When I walked into the lab this evening I was a little afraid of what hard assignment would be thrown at us today. I looked at the lab assignment itself and was delighted to see that there were only four questions and they were actually pretty simple. A couple of them involved using ArrayLists which I very comfortable with using because I used them in my homework program. We also got assigned our fourth programming assignment in class today which looks somewhat similar to the last one and I plan on working on it this weekend.

Program Completed!

After hours of long and hard work I finally got my program to work. When I previously posted I only had the size and the getCommonTweets method to write which didn't seem like too much work initially. I started with the size method first because I thought it would be the easier of the two to write and I was right when I thought that because it literally only took me one line of code to correctly write the size method because I only needed to get the number of tweets for a given key. However, the getCommonTweets method posed some problems for me. It required me to think in a really weird way and I had to draw the problem out to be sure I wrote it correctly. I had to consult the Java API Documentation page several times because I knew that by using one of those methods that it would make writing the method easier. After that long and hard process I finally got the getCommonTweets method to work with all the test cases I put it against.

Lecture...wait..my program works!?!

Thursday's lecture was pretty straight forward because it talked a lot about applying methods and arrays into classes and object. Because of the lab quiz last Tuesday I studied hard on arrays and methods so it wasn't really a huge challenge. Later on in the evening came the highlight of my night. I had finished the size method of the program on Wednesday, but I had not tested it yet because I had not created my add method to see if the size method actually worked. After about three hours of work I got five of the other methods to work, but the size method and the getCommonTweets methods do not work. Fixing the size method does not sound like it will take too much time. However, the getCommonTweets method seems like it's going to be a pain to finish. I had eclipse fix some of my errors for me and I had to consult the API Documentation a bit, but if I get six of those methods done I will be satisfied.

Lab Quiz...Check!

So after a nice weekend with nice weather and whatnot it was time to get back to CS 1121. Although I have started the homework program somewhat, I was mostly concerned about the lab quiz that occurred this Tuesday. What I did was go through each lab question that we completed and commented the entire code to follow the entire logic flow. Since my lab was Tuesday night I had the first lab quiz. The lab quiz itself was surprisingly easy except for the last problem. On the third problem I kept getting errors because I made an infinite loop, but I looked at the code closer and determined that I had made a very silly mistake. The last problem involved a TreeMap which is not my strong suit. However, I was able to receive 4 out of the 10 points for the question because I got the method to do one of the things and ended up with 94 points overall on the quiz!

Yeah....about the homework program...

So it turns out that my laziness has gotten the best of me today because I did not start the program today. However, I did get lots of studying done for the lab quiz Tuesday evening. Since the quiz is worth 10% of our entire grade in the class I was more concerned with that. It's not that I didn't care to do the program, but I just needed to study because I had not done any studying prior to today and I can easily say that I got a lot done. What I did was go through each and every problem in lab 5 through 8 and commented each line of code so I fully understand the entire logic flow. Plus since I'm going over problems that relate to the content on the lab quiz, I expect that the problems will have a similar structure to the ones on the lab. I do not expect exact copies of the questions on the quiz, buy studying the problem will definitely help me prepare for the quiz.

More Class Stuff

In class on Thursday we talked more about classes. Specifically Dr. Poplawski discussed reference variable and how they are used within the context of a Java class. This material was very easy for me to understand because not only was I successfully able to complete all the CodeLab problems for this lecture, but this material was taught to us in a very slow manner so everyone would be able to understand. Our class has been working on object and classes for about two weeks now and I like the fact that we are spending this much time on objects because it gives everyone the opportunity to understand it. This weekend I plan on starting homework program #3 and utilizing the learning center. I will most likely make my way over to the learning center on Sunday night to have a coach help me if I need it, but I plan to get a good chunk of my program done this weekend.

Back to the grind

Coming into Tuesday after a relaxing spring break I felt pretty good about the material being covered. It is not very complex because we are going over one little thing at a time and talking in detail about them. For example, in class today Dr. Poplawski discussed constructors with us and after reading the section about constructors and doing the CodeLab it seemed pretty straight forward to me. However, the real difficulty that I experienced today was during my lab section when we worked with two-dimensional arrays. My partner and I struggled mightily with this week's lab because we both forgot most of the information regarding two-dimensional arrays, but we got help from the lab TAs and finished most of the problems. There is a lab quiz next week, but I'm not gonna worry too much about it because I plan on going through all the lab problems and comment the code so that I understand it.

Homework Program 3

As I await the third homework program assignment to open up I'm starting to go over all the rules for Maps and ArrayLists because I feel like this program is going to include those objects. By going over these it will make starting the homework program a little bit easier, but I highly doubt that I will be able to finish this program before spring break ends because I will not be able to access any sort of help from the learning center or lab TAs. There has not been any program where I have not needed any help and that is when I search for help. I really like how the learning center coaches help with the program because they don't necessarily just tell you how to write the program. The learning center coaches really do make me think and although it is a struggle to think about it, the coaches makes sure I understand the concept and understand the entire logic flow of the program.

Classes = Rice Krispies Recipe

Thursday's class was a pretty laid back lecture and Dr. Poplawski talked mostly about the distinction between classes and object. The class, as he put it, is like the rice krispies recipe while the object is like the rice krispie itself. A class is the description of what happens in the object and the object is the thing that the class is describing. Dr. Poplawski also went through a simple example of the application of the classes and object. He made the class in one java file and the object in another. It was a bit confusing at first as to why he did that, but after seeing the result and how the methods were implemented into the class, it made more sense to me. I imagine that the next homework program will have to do with maps and/or classes and methods. During spring break I will at least look at the homework program and attempt to at least start it.

2D Arrays

Today was the last CS filled day before spring break and it definitely was worthwhile that I showed up to class. We learned about multidimensional arrays and how to apply them to our code. Being good with for loop is essential in applying 2D arrays. In the book almost all of the examples given had at least one nested for loop and all of the examples shown in class had that same format as well. However, during the lab I was not performing at my optimum level because I was quite tired because of studying for my Physics exam. While in the lab my partner and I had several questions, but the lab TAs were able to effectively help us with our problems and we successfully got through three of the five problems. The readings for next class seem pretty lightweight, but I'll still attempt to read it and understand it before class on Thursday.

Program #2...Success!

After meeting up yesterday, me and my partner thought hard about this assignment and how we were going to complete it. We planned to incorporate an ArrayList that contains the elements for the match array and an ArrayList that contains all the differences generated by putting the pattern array against the data array. To determine these elements for the ArrayLists we used several for loops. After about two hours of hard work and drawing out the problem, we got out program to work correctly and after using our test cases to test the program it worked perfectly every time! We knew going into this that there would be no easy way to complete the program, so we broke the program down into easier steps and that strategy ensured success in writing the program.

Let's get er' done!

I'm not known for being a person who procrastinates a lot, but for this programming assignment my partner and I have held off from starting this assignment until today. In our assignment we know that we have to use for loops and we have set up those and we also have to create variables for the lowest difference and the temporary difference. Our program is still somewhat in the embryonic stages, but we are going to meet up tomorrow morning in the lab to work with it a bit more for obvious reasons. We have pretty much gotten up to the point where we can create an ArrayList inside our method then convert it back to an array then print it out by using the main method, but we still have quite a bit more work to do before we can check off this assignment.

Maps?...No Problemo!

Going into class on Tuesday I knew that it was going to be an easy lecture because after reading the section on maps I completely understood it. The whole concept of maps is quite simple, but when Dr. Poplawski drew out the whole map drawing on the board with the references it was a bit confusing. However, I'm sure with some more practice the whole map drawing will make more sense to me. The stressful part about this week is definitely going to be getting the programming assignment done. My partner and I have not met much regarding the programming assignment because we have been busy this week, but we are going to meet in the next day or so and start the assignment and possibly come close to completing it.

Upcoming Week

As I approach this new week I have a lot of work ahead of me. Not only are we going to be learning new things like HashCode and whatnot that I am not familiar with, but I have the challenge of completing the programming assignment. I completed the test cases for the code earlier today and now I am faced with the challenge of organizing the assignment into code. The use of ArrayLists are definitely going to be essential because they are definitely a lot more helpful and programmer-friendly than arrays are. There will definitely be some for loops as well and I am getting better with those since we are working more with those in the lab and using them in concurrence with methods and arrays. It will be a challenge to complete the code by this next Sunday, but it will definitely get done.

ArrayLists > arrays

Before attending class on Thursday I had read the ArrayLists document the night before and I quickly realized that ArrayLists are a lot more convenient than arrays. Arrays do not have the ease of modification that ArrayLists do plus one does not have to define a size of the ArrayList once it is created. By learning these ArrayLists and having Dr. Poplawski show us some ArrayLists in loops it will definitely make writing the code for our next homework assignment a lot easier. It will still take quite some time to think about the problem and develop a general idea for how to code it, but with the ability to work with a partner it will make the assignment easier because I have another mind to consult with to try and solve the problem.

CS Tuesday

After a nice winter carnival it was that time of the week again to experience my Tuesday CS day. Before heading into class on Tuesday I was unsure on several topics regarding arrays and whatnot. After going through several examples and receiving more information it really made more sense to me. This was evident in my lab Tuesday night as well because my partner and I flew through the exercises that included methods and arrays with hardly any issues. During the lab I also received my program score back and felt disappointed as I had only received an 82 out of 100. When I turned in the program a couple weeks ago I thought for sure that I would receive a perfect score, but the test cases proved otherwise. Next time I create a homework program I have to be sure that it works for test cases similar to the ones used in the first programming assignment. 

Lab Quiz/Lecture

My Tuesday was basically a CS1121-filled day because of the lecture this afternoon and the lab during the evening. The lecture was about arrays and after I read the material the previous night I had somewhat of an understanding of arrays, but when Dr. Poplawski went through some examples on how to use arrays it seemed a bit more clear to me. I also experienced my first lab quiz this evening. The first lab quiz and actually all of the lab quizzes are worth 10% of my grade each so the pressure definitely was on. I walked into the lab with a pretty confident mindset and as the lab quiz started I completed the first three questions within about 20 minutes, but was stuck on the last question. All in all I ended up with a 90% on the quiz and I'll take that any day.

Back To Reality

 After witnessing an intense Super Bowl 46 I'm ready to get back into the groove of things for CS 1121 and all of my other classes. I have yet to read the text for the next CS 1121 lecture, but I have gone over some lab problems to study for the lab quiz on Tuesday evening. Basically what I would do is take the lab problems I have completed and comment them so I know exactly what is going on in every step of the code. For the problems that I have not completed I would use the lab problem answers posted on the CS 1121 website and comment those programs to understand the process. With all of this studying under my belt, I feel pretty confident about the lab quiz on Tuesday.

DONE!!!

Following another CS 1121 lecture on Thursday, I made my way over to the CS learning center to see if they could fix my program. However, when I got to the learning center it was packed full. I found myself trying to work on my code for about an hour or so in the lab until I became frustrated enough to just walk away from it for a while. Later that evening I tried going to the learning center again, but once again it was full so I had to fend for myself. I knew that since there was no learning center help available to me, I had to finish up the code myself. While in the lab on Thursday night I was playing around with my program to try and fix the errors and eventually I got it to work perfectly! I commented the code up and everything so I expect nothing less than a perfect grade on this program!

Uhhh ohhhh......

I spent a good portion of this past weekend going over the homework program and trying to complete it. There were some initial troubles, so I took a trip up to the CS learning center and they got me started. I finished the program Monday evening and tested it and the program looked all good...or so I thought. Before the lecture on Tuesday I went over to Rehki 112 to submit my program, but I tested it out to be sure it was good and some of the outputs were incorrect. The input text that was found on the homework page yielded the correct output when I tested it using those values, but I used other values when I tested the program and out came the wrong output. I will most likely visit the CS learning center once more to see if they can correct this problem.

Upcoming Week

As I gear up for another week of CS 1121 I am coming into this week with a bit more confidence. This weekend I focused mainly on working on my first homework program. Although there was minimal progress on the program working by myself, I was able to find some help in the learning center. I visited the learning center on Sunday night and the learning center coach was able to effectively help me with my problem. It was a bit frustrating because I still am not 100% on everything, but the coach had enough patience to help me at least start my program. I now know that the learning center will be my first choice of help if I am stuck on any sort of CS 1121 homework. I'm now ready to tackle this coming week and the CS 1121 challenges that face me!

Class on Thursday

As I would have guessed, this whole programming gig is getting harder and harder as the semester progresses. We talked more about loops in Thursday's class, but it was something that I had never covered with MATLAB so it was completely new to me. Nested loops were the main topic of Thursday's class and Dr. Poplawski stressed that loops are a complex, but essential component of programming. This class is going to require me to really manage my time better and the addition of our first homework program is not making things much easier. I plan to go to the Computer Science Learning Center Sunday evening to get some extra help with my program, so hopefully by the end of the weekend I'll be farther into my program and ready to tackle next week's challenges.

Class on Tuesday 1/24

It was another fun-filled Tuesday of programming. I attended the CS 1121 lecture for the day and my lab section was also scheduled for that evening. In class today we were assigned our very first programming assignment and we went over the different loops. These different loops have the same objective, but have different syntax. It was not too hard to follow along with the lecture today because I have dealt with loops in programming before, but programming loops in Java is a bit different than MATLAB. Dr. Poplawski ensured us that we are going to make mistakes and it takes practice to become good at using and applying loops in a program. This was very encouraging and just show that with hard work I can do anything! 

Upcoming Week

As I gear up for another week at Michigan Tech it only mean another week of CS 1121! I have set to complete the readings for Tuesday's lecture, but from what I have read so far it is very similar to programming with MATLAB. This particular chapter is about loops and MATLAB has its own way of creating loops while writing code. The fact that I have previously programmed with MATLAB puts me at somewhat of an advantage because the syntax and logic flows are very similar. For example, the selections section of our textbook seemed like a cakewalk to me because I have previously dealt with those and only needed to learn how to apply them to Java. I realize that not everything about Java is similar to MATLAB, but my previous experiences gives me a good idea of what is to come next.

CS 1121 Week 2

During week two of CS 1121 we started to get into some of the basics within Java programming. We learned things like variables, expressions and operators in Tuesdays class. Because of my previous experience with MATLAB programming, this lecture was fairly straight forward because Java compares somewhat to MATLAB. We dealt with these topics more in the CS labs where we became more comfortable with writing basic code. During today's lecture, we dealt mainly with if statements. As Dr. Poplawski explained more about if statement it got me thinking. By using these if statements it just makes programming one big logic flow which is quite interesting.

CS1121 Week 1 Class

The first week of CS1121 went pretty smoothly. We basically went through the syllabus and whatnot and introduced the whole idea of an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the IDE that we used was Eclipse. Dr. Poplawski explained to us the significance of an IDE and how it corrects any Java syntax errors before the user runs the program. Using Eclipse in the lab during the first week was a bit difficult, but after Dr. Poplawski explained it to us and used it for examples during the lecture, it instantly became second nature to me. I also recently installed Eclipse on my computer, so CodeLab assignments and homework programs will be easier to do with this tool at my fingertips.