CSC148 Lecture Week 4

  Ah, recursion, my old enemy, we meet again. I am actually so glad that university terms are only 12 weeks long. I can only maintain good study habits for a few months at a time before I need a break, and in high school, by the last month, I was just out of gas. That was the month that we learned recursion and I just gave up, although now that I think about it, I don't think that the Waterloo Canadian Computing Competition recursion questions that my teacher gave us were suited to our skill level.

  The basic recursion we did in class with one base case and a very simple recursive statement, I can understand. Recursion is a type of algorithm where within a function, the function calls itself as a helper function. Recursion is best used on problems that can be broken down into smaller version of the same problem. One basic application of recursion is the factorial function shown to us in tutorial. For example, 6! can be broken down into 6 x 5!, which is then 6 x 5 x 4! and so on until you get to 1! which is just 1. Every factorial can eventually be broken down until 1!, so that is the base case which terminates recursion. The recursive call is then to call the function on n-1. Tracing recursion has been a good experience. I think I have a better grasp on exactly how recursion works now.

CSC148 Lecture Week 3

And here I was thinking that I had written my last SLOG. But now I am back to the wonderful world of blogging for class.

This week's topic is: Why do geeks need to learn how to write? My answer is pretty simple: Documentation. In the wise words of the Mythbusters, "The only difference between science and screwing around it writing it down". Programming and computers may seem highly individual, but in reality they require a lot of teamwork. The apps, websites, and programs that we use everyday were not built by one person. Programmers need to be able to communicate ideas and tell each other how their code works. This requires us to be able write clearly and concisely in a way that another human being can understand.

I for one hate writing comments, but no one (at least I'm assuming) likes to read uncommented code. I can't read the mind of whoever wrote the code. The code could be the most innovative amazing thing ever, but if I can't understand it, it is of no use to me. My human brain needs some plain English to process what it going on.

As another blogger points out, knowing how to write also helps us understand the problems we are trying to solve. Computer programming is fundamentally about solving problems, and we have to know what we are trying to solve before even attempting to do something about it.