Week 5

Week 5 is the first week where I've had to step outside my comfort zone. The labs are starting to get difficult and the concepts in class are new and harder to grasp. Plus with the burden of Assignment 1 looming on me (and the multitude of tests teachers decide to assign during this week), week 5 was hectic. However there is upsides to this week. What we learned in class this week helped clarify confusion I would sometimes have about errors in my code. An example of this is when I learned about scopes. For example, I did not know that an object created inside a method could not be referenced in the main of the class. This will help me foresee possible logic errors before they occur.


The lab used interesting aspects of recursion. The construction of a GCD function was an application or recursion I never thought of before. Also I can use this function for help in my math problem sets! Also the frozen list will be useful for coding later on in the course (I tend to like my lists to be frozen after referencing them anyway). Thankfully the examples from last week in class helped understand these problems. However these are just more examples on how recursion is a powerful tool. It keeps creeping up in methods I never thought would need it.

The Assignment 1 is so far a daunting task. Last year, we had to do towers of Hanoi as a problem set in our computer science course, so I am familiar with the concept behind the recursion. However, this is a much more complicated version with lots more features implemented. The addition of an extra possible stool makes the problems so challenging to the point where no solutions can be predicted for the larger number of stools. However a close answer should be possible with our knowledge of coding.

Thankfully we have reading week coming up because this week will be a tough one. Not only is there the regular lab and lectures, but the first Assignment due date is coming up and will make the next few days stressful as I scramble to finish it. At least there is no exercise this week!