Last year in my computer science class, we were learning how to program in Java. Things have taken a turn this year, as we’ve moved to C++. There are some thins about the two programming languages that are similar, but not everything. In fact, there are some things about C++ that I think make it easier to program than with Java. However, for some reason, the assignments that we have been getting have been even harder. It’s a good thing that I found this link for a website that offers help in computer science assignments, or I would have been completely lost.
One assignment that I can think of from this year that has been particularly tough has been one where we’ve had to print an upside down pyramid. It reminded me of an assignment that we had in the previous year, except this time we had to write it in C++ instead of Java. I thought it would be simple enough to do a loop inside of a loop, but my output wasn’t what I expected. I was getting a pyramid that was printing right side up instead of upside down. A year ago, I would have loved to get a pyramid that printed right side up on the first try, because I found that one to be a little difficult.
Once I looked at the website, I saw what was preventing my pyramid from presenting upside down. It was a pretty silly omission that I was making, but that’s usually the way it is with programming. Sometimes you miss something easy that will make a program perform in a totally different way than expected. For now, I hope that we stay focused on C++ before shifting to anymore programming languages. Although a good number of languages have similarities that make going from one to the other a little easy, I’d rather not have to learn new syntax.