My programming skills have greatly improved in the following ways:
When starting this class following the Labs and WODs were easier because we always had a screencast or someone to follow. Working on this assignment because it is the first assignment that we had to complete all on our own it was difficult and very intimidating. Working through this assignment my programming skills have greatly improved in being able to trace code and to find simple syntax errors. The semantic errors were hard to find and correct, but being able to think out what you want your code to do and then write it and test it has greatly improved my programming skills vs. the beginning of this class, where if I got stuck I could just watch a screen cast.
I need to work on the following to improve my programming skills:
I still need to work on not taking the easy way out. I get lazy and do not want to write my own code, so I do tend to steal code and give credit and then figure out how it works instead of trying to write it on my own. This often slows down my progress on my work because I do not know how the code works and gives me a lot of errors I have to trace through to figure out how the code works. Looking at examples of code help, but trying to copy and paste it into my own project often messes up what I already had, or it creates bigger problems.
I can do the WODs without looking at the screencast solutions first.
I think there is definitely certain WODs I can do without looking at the screencast solutions first. For most I can definitely get most of it done, but there is often a spot at the end where I get stuck and need help.
I feel ready I am ready to work on the next stage of complexity in programming (building small web applications like Assignment 1).
I do not feel completely ready to work on the next stage of complexity because it is very intimidating, but I am more confident I can figure out any problems that come. I feel more confident in my tracing ability and being able to follow what the code does, so I don’t have redundancy.
I think the class can be improved to help my learning in the following ways:
I enjoyed when we saw real classmates code and their projects and the problems they had. It was inspirational to see their designs and to see that we all run into the same problems. It was helpful to see the solution to our problem implemented on a project.
These are things that work really well for my learning in this class:
Labs are so helpful. I learn so much from the labs and what we do definitely helps with the WODs and Assignments. The labs have helped me to learn and I am able to complete them with confidence.
The labs have helped me to learn, but I don’t think I could complete them on my own. There are a lot of insightful programming tricks I learned from the professor when going through the labs. And even though it takes us a little extra longer to complete labs I do enjoy the thorough explanations of what we are doing and testing we do throughout the labs.