Here is my journal. This is where you will find entries detailing how I have progressed on working on my projects.
Entry 1:
I have enjoyed coding so far, but it has been far from easy for me. I have struggled with expressing my ideas and translating them into code, and there have often been things that I do not know how to do, but I have still had a great time learning regardless.
Entry 2:
So far in CS1, I have learned how to create functioning websites in CSS, and how to incorporate javascript in html files to add interactivity. In javascript, I have learned how to define variables, add event listeners, and run functions, among other things.
Entry 3: What I've Learned So Far
An event listener is a a piece of code that "listens" for a specific action from the computer (like a click, a mousemove, etc.), and does something when it "hears" that action, like run a function. A variable is placeholder for a specific thing or value. A function run provides an output for whatever is in the input, even if the input is nothing. HTML is the basic language for coding things. Javascript is used to add interactiveness to your HTML files. I am still sort of confused about what CSS is. The terminal is system built into the actual computer, that allows you do command it to do certain things. The console is something in javascript that records your actions on a webpage, and lets you know if ther
Entry 4:
This week I learned how to animate things using CSS. I made my first animation codesketch of a wolf chasing sheep using what I learned. The next thing I want to learn using animations is how make animations that react to certain event listeners. I am also still trying to figure out how to work on the opacity of my journal background.
Entry 6:
This week I worked on a codesketch incorporating for loops. It is not yet complete, but I feel like I understand the concept (somewhat). The way I understand a for loop is that it repeats an action for certain conditions. For example, it might keep making an image until there are 100 copies of it.
Entry 7:
This week I made a for loops codesketch that made 1000 walruses (I think that is the plural of walrus). Why? Who can say? The way I understand the walrus maker to work is that it creates divs with the class of walrus and adds them to the body. It does this for a set interval, which I set to be until the number of walrus divs is no longer > 1000.
Entry 8:
This week I worked on a mothers' day card codesketch that plays my mom's favorite song when clicked, and pauses when clicked again. I was trying to make it also change the background image when clicked, but for some reason it was not working like usual, so I think I am going to make a lab for this reason, and also to just improve my codesketch in general.
Entry 9:
This week I started working on my presentation of work. I attempted to incorporate if... else... statements into my very first codesketch, to make it function better, but was not able to do so successfully. I got a bunch of console errors about unxepected word "else", which I did not understand.
Entry 10:
This week I worked on my presentation of work. I wrote about my coding journey, and why I chose to make my baseball pitches codesketch.
Entry 11:
Over this course, I learned many things. I learned how to code in html, CSS, and Javascript. I learned how to make interactive codesketches using a variety of skills: event listeners, variables, for loops, intervals, arrays, math.Random, and if… else if statements (I’m sure there’s a bunch of other things I’m forgetting, but these are the ones I can recall. In addition to this, I learned how to code a personal website, including a journal, a projects page, an about page, and a home page. I grew throughout this course by becoming more independent when coding, and being able to figure things out on my own better. At the beginning, it was very tough for me to code anything without following a long in class or having the code sent to me, but as the course progressed, I became more comfortable doing so. While I often used the code sent to us as a framework for my code, I began starting from a blank sublime text document later on in the course, rather than just changing details to fit my design. I think the reason for this is that I began to understand what was going on much more, so I was more comfortable doing it all by myself. I really enjoyed this course because it was laid back, but I also learned a lot. It was nice that we could do projects involving things that we like, but at the same time I felt like sometimes things were too open-ended. Sometimes I wasn’t totally sure what to do because there were just so many options with the open-ended assignments. That was the one thing I would change, but overall, this was a really great course. My main advice to future students is to make labs. A ton of them. In the beginning, things didn’t make a whole lot of sense (at least to me), but I gradually improved by attempting to code things myself, and making labs when I was stuck. Also, I would tell other future students to not despair if they are completely lost in the first few weeks of the class, or even the first few months. Some people seem to get things right away, but for me it took a while. Eventually things start to make more sense. Also, I didn’t really do this, but I think it would have helped me come up with more ideas for codesketches if I had looked at other peoples’ codesketches and personal websites. Sometimes it was hard to come up with ideas that weren’t just variations on what I had already done, so this would have helped a lot. I really enjoyed this course, and I’m looking forward to computer science 2 next year!