So this is where I’ll begin this blog– as an undergrad at a community college, transferring to a major university come fall of 2015. I am taking a Fundamentals of Programming class using Alice, a drag and drop, storytelling object oriented programming app for Mac, PC, and Linux. Best part about it is it’s free.
Today was the first day of class and I am already excited. While I have a biology class as well this is a coding blog so we’ll get down to that.
Our professor seems nice (despite still using hotmail) but a bit flighty. He has a firm grasp on things, unlike my web dev professor from last semester and also unlike last semester, I need to build something that looks good, functions well, and has as few bugs as possible.
I just installed the older version of Alice as that is what is required for the course. I had version 3 but he pretty much advised against it, citing it to be a work-in-progress or beta, as the tech crowd would call it. The use of a thumb drive, though he suggests it, is out of the question. I will back it all up to Dropbox, the files, and when I get to class I will download them to the desktop and upload them back again, once I am finished. I don’t know if you can drag and drop from the browser yet. Haven’t tried it.
All and all it was a great day. As a gym rat I spent yesterday at the gym working on my legs and today was awfully painful. So tonight, instead of working primarily at the desk, I am going to lay in bed for a while and read the Programming with Alice textbook and drink coffee. I am really excited for this semester, learning how to think algorithmically and analyzing the problems I will face.
