Log for 11 February 16

Content:

·         How to use if, else, and elif statements to set conditions eg. to find out which years are leap years

o   def is_leap_year(x):
if x % 400 == 0 :
return True
elif x % 100 == 0 :
return False
elif x % 4 == 0 :
return True
else :
return False

·         Spotting and creating a valid function definition

               

·         Reading functions and predicting output

·         Implementing functions to meet specifications

Process:


It was our first time being exposed to Coursemology. I feel like it is a very engaging and
helpful platform for us to learn. We completed several Coursemology questions to help us
put into practice and refine the skills we have just learnt. I will most definitely use Coursemology as a learning and self revision tool in the future  as it has a self mark option. We will immediately be marked on our answer after submission and this makes it very convenient for us to learn and revise as and when we like. Coursemology also has a very interesting interface and system that makes it fun and enjoyable to complete the tasks in it. There are many exercises in Cousemology and I look forward to completing all of them as I become better-versed in programming through my journey of learning.

Through the learning of the 'if', 'else', and 'elif' functions, we got exposed to one of the most basic yet essential programming functions. The most important skill from learning this, apart from the function itself, was that it was our first exposure to computational thinking. Being able to think computationally is important for us to become more successful programmers. Through the learning of this three functions, we understood the running of codes, from the top line to the bottom line in sequence and thus could understand the sequence we had to code in and how to make our codes run in the order we want them to. At the start, we also created codes that were unnecessarily long in length. We also learnt to make our codes more simple and concise so that our codes would be less messy and more easy to read and debug if necessary. I agree that such organisation is important and the mark of a good programmer. A good programmer should be able to write effective codes that can be simply understood once read.

Reason:
These are some of the basic coding that we may need that can help us in game-creation, our Raspberry Pi project, and so on. In everything, the basics and fundamentals are extremely important and programming is no exception. Without knowledge of the basic concepts and computational thinking, one cannot be effective in coding.

Personal Development:

Today, I got to put into use several of the programming concepts I have already learnt before. Even though it was somewhat a revision session for me, it was definitely not an easy one. The activities in Coursemology were effective in giving me a glimpse of what programming is like as we had to build or modify codes to fit a particular objective. I was able to learn and understand alot today.