SUPER-MEGA-FINAL-BEST BLOGPOST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Computer Science is over. Here is Mason's comprehensive review of the course!

Computer Science 1 was useful. In the beginning the tutorial programs were effective for complete beginners, and the flexibility of course material in the end was useful for more experienced programmers. However, there were of course some issues that can and should be resolved to make this course a better experience for future students. I will start from the beginning. Scratch, the first teaching program we used, was great if a bit annoying. It taught the basic building blocks of programming without requiring the student to actually learn any syntax. The interface was very navigable and each part of the code had an easy to recognize purpose. For someone who already knew these basic concepts, it was a little boring, but nevertheless it was a useful review. I highly recommend that this program is used again next year.

Moving on to the problem child of the bunch, Alice. I personally hated Alice. It didn't seem to really have a place in the curriculum. It was a teaching program, but its syntax was weird and tried to combine real syntax with the drag-and-drop method of scratch. This was a horrible mix and it made creating programs frustrating and difficult. Further more, it didn't actually let you do much more than Scratch did. Sure, it had the "3-D worlds" but these were very limited and seemed disappointing after putting in all the effort of coding them ("Whew, that's done. Now, let's see what I've accomplished! ...What? It only made the pirate move 2 steps forward? ARGH!!!!!") I see that it was intended to teach more advanced coding concepts, but the only way to do that is with real code, not some strange Frankenstein mixture of two methods. I would suggest that instead of Alice students next year learn some basic, but real, language such as Python or Visual Basic. These are simple enough for someone fresh out of Scratch to pick up while being potent enough to do something worthwhile.

I think the next major thing we did after Alice was start Java. Java is a great programming language. However, it seemed to me that the previous instruction in the course did little to prepare a completely new student for Java. There is a huge leap between Scratch and a real language. Syntax suddenly turns from friendly, easily understood terms into scary symbols that have no business doing what they seem to be doing. This is another reason why a simpler programming language should come first. It shows you what real syntax and coding is going to be like without being too scary. It seemed to me that once people got used to the coding it was a very good experience for everyone. Students got to actually do something cooler than a simple program that would print "Hello World." Or move a pirate slightly.

Once the main Java labs were finished I chose to move on to other languages, wanting to see something I had never done before. The sudden lack of direction in the class was a bit startling. The transition from clear-cut labs to "eh, do whatever you want to learn about" was probably a bit scary for some people which is why they stuck with Java. This is a bit sad because I think it is better for people to learn a bunch of different things. A better way to do it might be giving a small presentation on some suggested courses of action, then requiring everyone to do one or two labs in each language. They would afterwards chose whichever one they liked the best.

The situation after this stayed the same pretty much. I went ahead with Python, and in the end did some C# in VisualStudio. It was nice to get a peek at everything. Overall, It was a good class in which I learned a lot. I hope it served as a good introductory course for other people, and that the suggestions I gave here can help to make this class even better. Good night and good luck.

Share Post

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-05/flatworm-regenerates-new-body-single-cell

Worms have always been known for their ability to regenerate themselves if they are cut in half, but A new study has found that a flat worm can build an entirely new body from a single cell. It is the first time a cell similar to a stem cell has been found in an adult animal, and could pave the way for regeneration of human tissue. I certainly want to be able to grow back an arm if I lose one.

this week in Computer Science

I finished the last XNA project with Peter. It went smoothly, with no comprehension problems. After this I think we will try to make our own simple program from nothing, and then move on to some more advanced tutorials/projects. I was unable to do anything on Friday because I was sick. Hopefully Peter found something specific for us to do.

make-up share Post

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-05/new-smartphone-app-helps-target-land-mines-greater-accuracy

Smart phones can now officially do everything. An app developed for these versatile platforms greatly improves the accuracy of images delivered by metal detectors. It identifies vague outlines and suggests whether the detected object is a land mine or not. I see one problem with this though: what is the likelihood that a person walking in a Middle Eastern mine field will have a smart phone on which to put the app?

make-up Post

The post I missed were actually the ones previous to those which you have marked as zeros on gradespeed Mr. Stephens. Checking the dates of my posts on the blog shows that. I am not entirely certain what I did that week, but I think I was attempting to working on a combination of appinventor and pythongames in an attempt to find something to occupy me for the rest of the six weeks. I was unsuccessful, s neither option really interested me, but luckily you stepped in and suggested the visual studio projects, which have proven to be very interesting.

Share Post

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-05/computer-scientists-induce-schizophrenia-neural-network-causing-it-make-ridiculous-claims

The construction of the robot apocalypse is moving right along. Computer scientists have given a neural simulator program schizophrenia, causing it to say crazy things like claiming responsibility for a terrorist bombing. It was done by making the program absorb so much information that it was unable to distinguish between truth and lies. So now the robots are ready, the brains for the robots are ready, and they are now crazy. Excellent.

this week in Computer Science

This week I continued work on Visual Studio with Peter. A major problem in the beginning was the lack of an Xbox controller to test our programs with. This issue grew as the instruction videos placed more and more emphasis on making programs for the Xbox. Luckily on Thursday we were able to get a controller to use the programs we had created. C# is an easy language to learn that is extremely similar to java. It continues to seem to be able to do a wide variety of tasks, most of which have been related to games and display modifications of some kind. Hopefully we wil expand into other areas once we have finished the tutorials.