Category: Assignments

After reading both chapters, I realized for my past two assignments instead of looking at the assignments as a whole and if I started to break things down it would have been much easier. Instead of trying to focus on all aspects at once working on one aspect at a time is something I need to work on. This would have prevented me getting stuck so many times. I liked chapter 11 alot it helps to know that every coder gets bugs and its not just me.

After reading chapters 10 and 11 I have realized how complicated I have made my coding thus far. Whenever I have an idea, I’ve never really organized it in any way. Breaking my idea into parts is a good way to simplify my idea so that it seems less overwhelming. Going from idea to parts would probably be the most difficult part for me, just because I wouldn’t know how to separate my big idea into little parts. I guess it will take some practice. Overall, I think creating some sort of algorithms with parts will make my code more organized and less overwhelming. It will also help in the debugging process.

In chapter 11 I loved reading about how everyone who does coding always has some sort of problem with bugs in their code. I honestly thought it was just me. It’s super frustrating when my code doesn’t work as intended, and then how I have to search my (unorganized) code for a bug. I guess I should probably make my code simpler and more organized. Also making comments throughout my code could be helpful as well. The troubleshooting process that they talked about in chapter 11 was really helpful.

These articles were interesting to me. I have about two years of experience with Java and have competed in UIL competitions using Java, and until last semester I was majoring in Computer Science. Technically I still am since I haven’t officially filled out the major change form. Part of me revolts against the order and technicality of OOP techniques, and writing clean code when it comes to art. I can totally see the value in utilizing these techniques and how much easier it can make everything, but it does feel very technical to me. Perhaps this is why I have not used much of my prior knowledge in any of my sketches. Art feels like a different world, but in reality, you need both order and freedom of expression. There is freedom within constraints. The iPhone is beautifully designed and ingeniously programmed. Great products utilize both, and I suppose art is anything that guides us to wonder. Nevertheless, it is a challenge for me to abstract “a brush stroke”, or to create a class for each object I want to use, but I suppose it’s like a painter pre-mixing their paints to be able to use them during the painting process.

This is my first big project that I did in this class by myself. I took the idea from the eight ball that I used to play with as a kid, and basically tried to digitize the same process. After reading few chapters in our assigned reading, I realized that I should’ve done something more original and creative. Processing is a great way to be creative, and express it in an unique way that is quite different than other forms of art.

I also wish that I organized my code a bit more, I realized that if I don’t take time organizing my code when I first write it, it is going to get complicated in the far run. A great way to organize code is using different classes and also using arrays. After being almost one with my code, I realized that I can make my code simpler and more organized by taking some things out and separating them into its own class. When I did so, I was able to go through my code easier.

These chapters have really made me reconsider how I approach coding in Processing. If I had first approached what I wanted to do step-by-step and simplifying it, I would have an easier time laying out my code. The way I went along my midterm is simply work with conceptions floating around my head and trying to code off of that. However, upon reflection, there were many times that I was stuck because I did not know how to approach a problem. Other times, I would have progress accomplishing a certain task until I realize that the way I was going about doing it would not work out later on, then I have to scrap the work and try the other method. If I had laid out my idea, wrote pseudo-code, I would have a much clearer understanding of what code would work. I would have saved a lot of time. This goes for the debugging section too. I rarely used println, and I realize I could’ve to really see what was going wrong. I wholly agree with getting someone else involved. When I went to a tutor to look at my code when it wasn’t working, simply the process of me explaining it to him made me realize where I could be going wrong.

After reading these chapters, I’ve been reminded about one of the most important concepts of coding, algorithms.  I’m not the most visually creative person, so sometimes my processing sketches could be very one dimensional and not very impressive. But after reading this, I am going to try to implement my sketches in a more algorithmic style and have the algorithm behave based on user interaction.

For this one,

I was seating and thinking about what I am going to do. I just started to try to put image into background using code. I had to figure how I need to do. So, I searched processing site, and finally I could completed to put image and sound.

I will try to make interaction using mouse.

I think chapter 10 of the reading really aligned with our midterm projects. For me, since I really wanted to work with classes, classes naturally had me break down my project in the way that chapter 10 advised. And so for each of my elements/functions, I would make a separate sketch and write that one element/function before copy and pasting it into the final sketch. I think this is a good way to organize everything, because it’s easy to write messy code and to get lost in it (especially when I have to refer to it again hours/days later). The only problem that would then arise would be getting everything to connect and work as one sketch. For example, when I worked on each class individually in another, I automatically set the background to another color and so when I compiled all of them into one sketch, my background wouldn’t change colors like I wanted it to because all the classes’ set backgrounds would inhibit it to. From chapter 11, I think I should definitely take more breaks, since it code can be really frustrating. Additionally, I think I should reach out for more help (whether it be another coder or office hours), since it’ll help me learn code and fix it if I talk about what I’m doing. Also it might be worthwhile to utilize the println() function more. I’ve never used it, but for more complicated sketches, it might be helpful to learn it and use it.

After reading chapters, I could learn how to approach the concept. Also, I realized there are better ways to express or represent my idea. For example, using ‘dist’ ,which was explained in chapter 10, was easier to complete intersecting with object instead of using check collision which I used for midterm project for interesting. I am happy to realize this notion. I think i’ll probably have to learn lots of way for coding to be able to do a good thing when I say what I want.