Project 2: Aftermath

Project 2 was surprisingly challenging and short at the same time
Maybe it was me, with the experience of working on project 1, but it took me much less time and more thinking at the same time.
The problems were new, but I felt that skill of fixing the code was building up in me.
The same approach, but just needed more logic and "cause and consequence" thinking.
I also changed approach of debugging, by not just changing the code and looking at what happens and than trying again, to spending some time thinking what part would be more appropriate to change, and why this error keeps popping up. This time I could not just find the right help section and by analogy figure out the key to unlock the proper line. It started to feel more detailed and in-depth thinking being involved.


P.S. I am taking CSC108 in next semester and definitely looking forward to it. More assignments, more thinking. I am ready.

Work On Wiki Project

The work on the wikipedia assignment proved to be not as easy as I thought. it never occurred to me that editing or creating wiki article would prove to be a programming challenge. Moreover just to understand wiki rules and what is required to make your work worthwhile, that almost every statement you make must have a solid evidence to support it proved to be as challenging as the rest of it. 

First, just to pick a topic that need to be fixed is a problem in itself, as it requires you to have an access or know where to find that information. My first try was a failure, since I chose a topic on which it is almost impossible to find information - "Appliance plug". There is almost no solid third party references regarding this topic, since it is not popular at all, and there are not many history of appliance plugs books available. After spending the whole day desperately trying to find one, I decided to stop this nonsense and wrote a letter to a professor and a TA regarding my problem and asked i could create a new wiki page. The reason why I wanted to do it is that in process of looking for the info and browsing in wiki, I found out that there is no link to the "city safety" feature that Volvo head developed. Since I currently work there, I know a lot about it and could actually share my knowledge with wiki auditory and create my own article.

First problem I encountered when I tried to organize references. To make them display in a correct order and with a separate tittle I had to find the right command, it happened to be <ref> text "title" </ref>. The next step was to create a wikilink from my page to other relevant pages that would explain some details of the article. For that I had to put [[title]] square brackets around the weird on the text, and it had to comply with the wiki rules. 

Over and above the tremendous work of understanding how wiki universe works, the best tips and help I found was from carefully studying the code of another page and carefully breaking it down into small parts and finding the means and causes of how it works. 
one of the great learning tools of course was the sandbox, where you could learn and see how the page works before submitting it to wikipedia. 

At the end I found the cause of why people work so hard on wiki articles and spend so much time. it is for enjoyment of sharing information that is valuable to others and understanding that you could easily make a difference in this world.

Midterm is coming SOON!

The project 1 had been a great practice of my programming skills. It took a while to get used to figuring out how to solve a problem on my own, but it greatly contributed to my learning experience. I would post some hints of what I think would be a great strategy to follow when experiencing difficult programming task:
1) Copy out a portion of code that has an error and look specifically into it. Spend some time figuring out exactly what it does and what is the purpose of it.
2)  Go through the relevant portions of textbook that have the topics covered from the problem code, search through DrRaket online help database for explanation and examples. Might provide you some hints.
3) The hardest step is to improvise! Change one relevant portion of the code at a time and click RUN to see what happens. If you do not know how to solve it, the only thing you really need is time. Keep your eye on the error messages and make sure you understand what is wrong and what needs to be fixed.
4) You may also want to look at the stepper. Which is a great tool to help you get to the right step where you messed up and find a specific spot that needs to be fixed.
5) If you are completely stuck, STARE at the code, at the problem that needs to be fixed and think what you can do fix it. Or do not think. The more time you spend on it the more likely it will come to you.
6) Never give up! Just remember that any problem that you've got can be solved. Maybe not now, but sometime soon it would be possible.

P.S. right when i submitted my project i noticed that when "down" key is pressed it stops the clock but also puts clock-hands into 1 2 3 mode. For a minute I panicked and thought that it should freeze at the time when I hit the "down" key. However when I checked the instructions it did not say anything about that, and I could not think of way how to do it. So if anyone else had the same thought in their mind please share if you had come up with some idea's on how to solve it! 

Project 1 goes on.

New evening brings up new programming issues. Now DrRacket force-closes every 10 minutes when I try to fix the function with several windows or tabs open. That is very frustrating and the worst thing is that there is nothing I can do about it. Too busy actually trying to make the clock work. What a tough problems! after first one with the colour problem, I was able to figure out it quite easily, now is turn for the im. And WOW they are so alike, but because its an image and not a colour I have to find what to add to make the definition complete. Going through the help and previous lectures without any progress, it is not easy to find the solution right away, but I have time to figure out by myself what is going on and make it work!

Working on Project1

On Monday took a first glance on the project. At first it seemed to be an extremely difficult task, because there are so many things to work on and mistakes are all over the place. However when I took the courage and tried to actually start working on the first one it is not as bad as it looks like. To start with I took the part of the code that needs to be fixed and put it into separate tab in the DrRacket, so you would not be distracted with the code below and above the needed part. For the writing the check-expect function for a definition is quite an easy task, just explore the definition very carefully and figure out the idea behind it, than just repeat it so program would perform the test and if it is successful, than you are done!

Now it is time to tackle all the others!!!

Finally Started it Up!

Phew!

Completely forgot about the SLOG part. So much work and studying to be done, it is exhausting a bit.

But need to keep up with the Racket part of my programming course. Here I would post some troubles I face and solutions that I come up with regarding that program. One thing that bugs me is how buggy Dr.Racket for Windows7 is, so many freezes and forced closures that I am thinking of putting Ubuntu on my old netbook and hope that it would run much smoother.

However my first try failed (I could not say that I didn't expect that). The reason is for its failure was that installation aborted when it could not find a Ubuntu live CD in my drive (however since it is a netbook it does not have a drive). I used an 10.04 netbook edition.

Ok, I think I got too much off topic and next post would be about actual issue on Dr.Racket.

P.S. But if anyone knows the solution to my problem I would be happy!