Wrapping up

I loved this weeks assignments. Especially the homework. I feel like the Google Maps API is really easy to work with, and the lecture was really helpful in explaining exactly what we needed to do and how to do it.

The project is coming along, slowly but surely. We're creating our visualizations right now and working on the paper. We're also in the process of loading everything onto a website as we complete the work. I'll be pretty glad to be done with this project because I didn't enjoy it that much. The topic was kind of boring to me... I guess it's my fault for not finding a group and letting myself get assigned.

This week

I think I liked the way we did the lab this week much better than normal. Even though it was combined with the homework and was longer and maybe more complex than normal, I feel like working on it was more enjoyable than normal because the stress of having another assignment right after was not there. Being able to work with someone on the entire assignment was also helpful.

One thing that I was not crazy about, and I know a lot of people were not happy about, was the fact that we had to finish the assignment 2 days after it was assigned. I had a very busy week this week and wasn't able to finish it in time to run it 5 times. I even forgot to do my blog post until now...

A suggestion

I think it would be much more helpful if we did the labs as a class so that we could follow along with you. Then having a homework assignment that is similar to the labs but different enough that it forces us to apply what we learned in the lab to the homework. I am still struggling to complete the labs and homework and feel like I am barely making it through each assignment. While being able to ask questions in class is helpful, I usually don't feel like I have many questions until I actually start the assignment and then get stuck. It's really hard to relay a question about this stuff through an email, and usually I have tons of questions and feel like I'm being too "needy" if I have to send 10 emails a week to the GSI asking questions about the assignments. In short, this class is making me feel dumb.

Frustration to the extreme

I am getting extremely frustrated with the content in this course. I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but I feel like we're going way too fast in terms of content and I'm getting serious information overload. I am not able to absorb old material before something new is introduced and that's becoming a serious problem for me. I know of at least 2 other students whom I regularly talk to that also feel this way. I don't understand why so much is packed into a 7 week course? It wouldn't be so bad if it was just doing the HW/Labs, but throwing a group project on top just seems silly to me. We don't even know the material and now we have to use it in a project??? Doesn't make sense to me... /endRant

Homework assignments

I'm finding that I really enjoy doing homework assignments when they involve modifying a current file (ie. the assignments with todo's). It's much easier to follow the code that's already there and assess what needs to be done. I find it much more difficult when we have to start from scratch because it just seems like it's much more difficult to wrap my head around what needs to be done. I feel like I learn more with the todo assignments because I'm able to focus on specific parts of an assignment and absorb that part as opposed to having to create a python file from scratch.

One thing I'm currently trying to figure out is how to use an or operand with a string. I keep getting an error everything I try to use "|" with a string. I figured out that my code is correct because I tried it with one string instead of all 5, but if I try to do more then one then I get an error.

New to Python

I'm new to Python since I tested out of SI 502 so it's somewhat new to me. I know Java and C# so I'm familiar with programming but have no experience reading in data and using code to change the data. I'm finding that some of the functions seem really obvious but I wouldn't think I'd be able to use them because I'm still in the mindset of Java where rules are much more stringent. Things like requiring your variables to be defined and spacing not mattering are what I'm used to, so changing my mindset is a bit of an adjustment. Either way, I love learning new things, and I especially like coding so I'm looking forward to this challenge and hope I don't get confused too much. It seems like there is quite a few resources out there to help me learn what I need/want to learn so I'm going to dive in head first.