Since I am a beginner in coding, every time I execute a code successfully, I consider that encounter meaningful. It’s satisfying and motivating to see when the code that I was struggling with finally work after hours of debugging and retreating. It is especially comforting for me to finally be able to keep up with Professor Hauser’s tutorials when at the beginning I was struggling to do so.

To improve in my skills better, I started doing a separate project using the stuff we learned in class to improve and to get a better understanding of python (mostly focusing on functions and input at the moment). Some of the codes I used in the practice project is inspired from the textbook (mostly chapter 5) and some from the recent tutorials Professor Hauser has done (2 extra videos on turtles). I also took some inspiration from our first in-class exercise and include them in this pratice project:

In this example, you can see that I used def twice (I think I used functions successfully since the code was able to run). I am still unsure what functions are so I will most likely have to reread that chapter and watch more videos on it.

Also, I watched Professor Hauser’s 2 extra videos on turtles and was able to follow along, which for me is meaningful because I was struggling at first to change the screen color using functions but this exercise is starting to help me understand.

Here are my results after following along to Professor Hauser’s tutorials:

One of the fun aspects of learning code is when I try something new with my codes after learning something new. For example, after reading chapter 5 and going over my notes from the reading, I was inspired to try something new. I was also motivated to improve in my coding. So I used an example from the textbook (print_menu - functions example from chapter 5) to pratice.

An example of my functions code:

def print_words() :
  tina.write("Menu", None , "-100", "16pt bold")
print_words()

#Listing the items in menu
input("What would you like to eat?, Enter Yes to see menu")

def print_menu():
    input("burger, $2 Fries, $1 , drink, $1")
print_menu()

I know it’s not much but for me this is a big step in getting better at functions.

Also, I’m starting to understand how to use tina the turtle better.

#the menu board
tina.fill(True)
tina.pendown()
tina.forward(-100)
tina.forward(-50)
tina.left(-90)
tina.forward(-110)
tina.left(90)
tina.forward(150)
tina.fill(False)

It wasn’t easy trying to move tina around the screen, it took a lot of error-and-trial to figure out how to get her where I wanted. There was a lot of retreating and debugging in this process.

I feel as though most of my classmates are ahead in coding so I am more motivated to improve to keep up with them

But coding is challenging as I’m still in the process of trying to figure out how to use conditionals, every time I try to use if or else I keep getting syntax error. It’s so frustrating that I have yet to have a code with a conditional statement (as I keep deleting them out of frustration) so when I have a chance I will be working on improving in creating conditionals. Another frustating part of coding is the debugging process, sometimes it takes me way too long to figure out what’s wrong with my code and then when I do figure out why it’s wrong and how simple the issue is, I feel silly, haha.