Week 4

Week 4... hmm. ah yes! The history of computers! 

This week we learned about how modern computers we have today came about in existence. In class the professor started talking about how clay tablets were the first computers..! Yes, clay tablets because the definition of a computer includes a device that is capable of storing information that can be retrieved later, and since clay tablets were capable of accomplishing exactly that, they are considered the first computers. Who would have thought?? Then it was the abacus which were beads on wires or rods that was used as an early calculator. I remember when I was a kid, I was enrolled in this special abacus school where they taught how to do math using only the abacus (I still do basic math in my mental abacus sometimes!) After that were looms that was able to read patterns off of punch cards and mimic that,  and engines (with the invention of the steam engines), and then came the first "computers" as we know today. These first computers were powered by steam in glass tubes which had numerous disadvantages leading to the use of transistors to replace glass tubes.

Week four was also the week part I of the Wikipedia assignment was due. When I first created my account and followed the instruction posted on the course webpage I was completely disordered because there were just so many links and so many sub categories. After much frustration and a power nap I read the instruction one more time and realized that the assignment is not as complicated as I perceived it to be. Finally I selected a couple articles that I wanted to work on including one on a really old Indian movie featuring one of my favorite actors (yay!) and submitted it on MarkUs.

This was the first time we had to actually had to read the Picturing Programs textbook for a tutorial and surprising I found it quiet helpful than the videos because the book has more examples and its easier for me to refer back and forth to it when working on the exercises. Maybe I will use the textbook more often!