Impressions of CSC104

Hi, my name is Bilal Negash and I'm a first year student. This isn't the first time I am writing a blog. I've previously made one in my last year of high school English. It wasn't as successful as I hoped it would be, mainly because I had only posted ONCE. I guess it was due to a lack of dedication for the material. I intend to fully commit myself to blog once a week for the rest of the semester, letting you know my personal impressions and feelings about this course.

First off, I'd like to quickly mention that I really like Professor Heap as our lecturer. I can tell that he is very enthusiastic about the material and is really passionate about computer technology in general.  I am looking forwards to a wonderful semester in the course with him.

Secondly, I'd like to discuss DrRacket, a programming application used for the course. I've personally had some programming experience in the past with Visual Basics, but I've got to say I really like DrRacket. Mainly because the computer language interface is really user - friendly. Although the language may seem weird at times, ex. putting + or - signs at beginning of code, it makes sense, in retrospective, that it is tedious to put multiple signs when there are a lot of numbers. One problem that I encountered when fooling around with DrRacket was trying to define a variable. After watching the " expressing values tutorial videos," I wanted to see if it was possible to define a variable, "image-area," by multiplying two default definitions "image-width" and "image-height." With no luck, I was unable to figure this out. But, I realized that we weren't expected to know how to define variables yet, since the upcoming DrRacket videos involved definitions. I guess curiosity got the better of me. In order to better prepare myself for this course, I shall look through the picturing program pdf. and understand how to properly define and express variables.

This is all I have to say for my first blog. This is a wonderful and engaging class and I hope everyone is able to benefit from this course as much as I hope too.