Filling the Gaps

It's getting more and more organized (I mean my studies), this week I managed to find time to code a couple of exercises, started a new chapter in textbook, and completed another CS106B lecture.  But I'm most proud of having found the time to do yet another problem from Project Euler pool.  Even though it was a relatively simple problem (this is #2, quite easy), it still provided an hour or so of thinking, coding, and pure fun, not to mention zero debugging!  Yes, it worked perfectly fine and provided the right answer on the very first attempt!  Really happy about that.  Here's my badge (later I am going to put it somewhere on my blog permanently):

My goal for the coming week is to develop a stable schedule of theory/practice studies to maintain consistency in learning.  It is obviously good to have the skills up and running, rather than scan the textbook each time I forget the name of a function call or interface syntax.

To sum up the week's results, here's a really tiny screenshot from my latest practice exercise:  distribution histogram.  :)

And, of course, not to forget the upcoming holiday!  Happy 4th of July, my US friends!!

Slow but Steady

Another tough week passes by.  Not enough time, not enough energy, and yet I've got more done than the week before.  I've completed two lectures, and may still have time left for a quick practice in coding recursion.

On the whole plans should become easier to manage now, since the most difficult part of the new part-time job is done (at least I believe so), so there should be less surprises.

Getting Done with C++ Basics

So, it's been about three weeks, and my C++ studies pass another significant point - I am about to finish introductory chapters in textbook as well as the CS106B first five lectures.  One thing I found out about C++ almost right away is that it's really easy to understand.  The syntax, the structure, the ideas are very similar to those I learned during Java studies.  To state the obvious once again, I am to continue with the lessons and exercises, maybe even at faster pace than I thought before.

Some minor yet quite important changes were made to the design of the web-site:  the corners are rounded (at least for Mozilla and WebKit-based browsers), the colors match better, the bugs are mostly fixed.  My goal for the week ahead would be to come up with a better background for the site, the current one seems to be way too dark...

This is it for today, oh and last but certainly not least:  Happy Easter!!  I love this holiday, not only because of colored food, but also because of the term 'Easter Egg' reserved for surprises hidden in the programs by coders.  So, Happy Easter again!!

Even More Changes!

The week was very intensive in terms of making decisions.  I considered various possiblities, and came to the following conclusions:

a)  I am not ready to spend time developing Java programs just yet.  Android is really nice platform, but too diverse;

b)  since my Java understanding is very good (I can write quite complicated programs, using various available techniques and patterns), I better press on to reaching my ultimate goal of learning Objective-C, rather than reviewing Java;

c)  even though it is possible for me to take both C++ and Objective-C courses and study in parallel, it would be better to study C++ first, learn and practice more programming patterns, and then continue on with Objective-C.

So, in light of all those considerations, I've decided to take CS106B course as planned.  My C++ studies began in the middle of the week, and developed nice pace already.  I like Julie Zelenski videos very much, and her teaching style being different from Mehran's seem to suit me better:  everything is so vivid and clear, I hardly need to review the textbook.

One more decision I've made this week was purchasing the Xcode 4 from MacApps Store, and figuring out how to make it work with my C++ course requirements.  I should say, that the difference between Xcode 3.2 which I already had downloaded and installed some long time ago and Xcode 4 is quite big, especially when it comes down to configuring projects and workspace.  However, right now I've got both versions of SDK working all right, and even have done some pretty basic C++ coding!