Lab #6b Log
0. My
name is
- How
much time did it take you to complete the Lab Report?
- This
lab expected that you were pretty familiar how to write loops. Were you?
- Programming
is concerned with taking millions of possible input combinations and generalizing
about them so as to classify them into a small number of groups and then
writing processing paths that take care of the significant differences between
the groups. To identify different
cases you have to try specific examples, but once you find the difference
between the handling of the specific cases, the program is written to
focus on the categories, not the specifics. We always must reach to point where we understand
that “the number of stars is the same as the number of the row we are
printing” before we can write the program. When all we can say is “there is one star on the first row
and two stars on the second row, and three stars on the third row, and….” We
have not reached the general understanding to write code. We have to learn to think in patterns
and test our understanding with specific cases. The code must be able to function properly no matter which
case the user presents. This lab
focused on clarifying different aspects of programming. Before we said there is problem
solving and there is programming.
Now we say there is syntax and there is logic. The logic (flow of execution of
statements) is constrained by the kind of statements that we can write, so
we have to both learn the statements AND learn how these limited commands can
be combined to express complex manipulations. Does this make sense to you?
- I have
illustrated experimenting to find out how things work. This lab required that you trace
(mentally execute) some code. If
you just typed the code into VB and execute it, you find out the
answer. What does the answer
teach you? What does tracing teach
you?