Week 6

Finally a blog on time!

This week we learned more about how computers store and output information using the Boolean logic plus the binary method and how computers use them to process information. Maybe all my hard work trying to figure that out last week was not a waste after all. Overall this week went pretty smoothly, the prof taught how to add binary numbers in class and since I already knew that the lecture was a breeze. 

As always I watched the tutorial videos the night before the tutorial but I caught on pretty quickly with the list, list-ref, structs, etc. On the morning of the tutorial me and my friend went through the videos one more time and discussed our questions and doubts among ourselves and went to write the quiz which I noticed to have gotten a little bit more challenging than the ones before this. The questions were not as obvious and more detailed plus now we were required to complete 5 out of 6 questions whereas before it was only 60-70% of the questions but I am not complaining! 

                                                   

Week 5 - Term Test !!

Not a lot happened this week other the term test madness. I was surprised that the term test just popped up out of nowhere because it was not even around the time midterms start. As I looked at the term test from last semester I thought to myself maybe this course is not as easy as I judged it to be. Seven pages and questions worth 5 and 10 marks? YIKES! I was confident about the computer history and the definitions-expression part of the test but not so much with the scary 10 mark question where you had to provide a check-expect statement, contract comment, and completing the define statement and body of the definition... Just the question sounds intimidating, not to mention the fact that I was not even quite sure what some of terms even meant. In the process of preparing for this test, I spent a good 2 hours trying to understand how to add, multiply, convert to integers the binary numbers only to realize the morning of the test that it will not even be on the test. (Jeez! I should really check my webmail more often!) 

The test was in fact challenging and I messed up big time on the 10 mark question just like I had predicted… Should have spent more time on figuring out that question than on the binary numbers that was not even on the test....

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!