SLOG Entry One

October 9 2013.
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Topic: [OOP]

Object-Oriented Programming, something which I was introduced to in the previous 108 course, is what I have come to know as a way to create object type classes. Inside each class are its methods, which would be the rules which the object were to follow.

Having been familiar with the basic information on OOP (such as string formatting, arbitrary "self" header), the first month helped me to further develop the intuition that just like functions, code explaining rules and outcomes are written inside the methods. And after completing parts of the first assignment, I have come to find that OOP is useful for computer scientists, because it helps them to create an object which will be later used for a program in the larger scale. By creating an object in form of a class, everything about the object (the shape it takes, rules, properties) are all stored into one convenient place.


Topic: [Recursion]

Another major topic discussed during the lectures is recursion, which is essentially the "reuse" of a particular order or call in order to help solve problems involving little to massive repetition. The first time this concept was introduced through code and in words, I had trouble understanding how exactly it was used. It was through a brief introduction of recursion through embedded sentences in linguistics, and later through the labs that it was understood that recursion could be used as many times as wanted, and modified to act differently but for the same purpose.

The reason why I think computer scientists find this concept useful is because for it allows them to accomplish what their intended function or program intends to do, and simply because the tasks can be accomplished in a much faster way. It saves their code from becoming too messy with all the repetitive code they would have have to write if they were to manually enter the repetitive bits.

For obviously even computer scientists would have a hard time reading another's code if they were to find millions lines of code for just one rule of the program.

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Student: g2flora