Week Four, Recursion

This week, we were given a better understanding of what recursion is. The whole concept behind recursion is interesting to me. I especially liked Wednesdays class where by using recursion and turtles, we were able to create a display of many fractals. At first when the tracing the code, I had a little bit of trouble. I wasn't following the recursion method when tracing and it gave me a weird picture. Now that I have seen what it actually is with the display of fractals, it's easier to trace the code and demonstrate what it does. I will probably look over the readings again just so I can get a better understanding of recursion but overall I got the gist of the concept. Recursion will be a handy thing for me when it comes to coding and once I 'master' it as Danny says, then I will feel more confident.

Object-Oriented Programming

Over the past couple of weeks, I have learned much in CSC148 under the teachings of Danny Heap. The readings are a huge help as well. Considering that I didn't really have any past knowledge of programming before I came to the University of Toronto, I found the readings incredibly useful when I needed to know some background knowledge of programming. Specifically speaking, the readings regarding object-oriented programming in week one and inheritance during week three. I found these readings to be extremely helpful when I didn't understand certain concepts of inheritance and the overall background of programming. I had no idea that object-oriented programming stretched as far back as the 60's. I realized that everything that we do in Python to an extent revolves around object-oriented programming. Classes, instances, and methods are all part of object-oriented programming. We use object-oriented programming to deal with ideas and concepts that apply to the real world. Whether it be a graphing program or even a game, it all deals with objects in order to obtain the desired goal. One of the few questions that I have about object-oriented programming is how complex could our programs become. Considering that in class we have been only working with smaller classes and functions that don`t require a lot of time, what is the extent of complexity in object-oriented programming. I essence, at some point in time during the course I would like to see a very big and complex piece of programming that deals with object-oriented programming, and try and follow the logic and steps behind the code. Even though I am only in first year, I would like to know how complex could things get and how they could evolve in the future.