Some thoughts after first assignment (fb app)

The first week is truly a shock. I once heard that tigers push their child down the mountain so that it will climb up itself and become stronger. It's like that in this module, I think. I can remember in the first lecture, prof mentioned that in the past time, people thought that 'if you give a man a fish, he will be fed for a day. If you teach a man how to fish, he will be fed for a life', and he said that nowadays, it would be rather 'if you give a man a rod and push them to figure out how to fish, then when there is no fishes anymore, he can easily figure out other things to help his life'. Indeed, the problem he gave us was at a greatly different extent of this. In my very eyes, it would rather be prof said that 'hey you guys, there are fishes out there, take me some'. From this simple thing, problems begin to arise. There are in fact many, many kinds of fish, from the smallest fish like the Paedocypris (google lol) fish to the giant fish like sharp, whale. Together with that, there are also many kinds of fishing, using rod, gun, chemistry,...Suddenly, things become very complicated and stressful, plus the fact that the time is very tight. Programming in my opinion is very similar to the things I describe above. But actually, facing such difficult problems in life is not a bad thing at all to me, if not, it is even kind of interesting :-).


Truly, first assignment didn't go smoothly as I expected it. I did not do my job well, in programming. After the first assignment, I realize some important things in me. Firstly, I'm bad at reading, and bad at finding new things. I was there, staring at the code of the publisher, struggled for almost a whole night, before figuring out how easy it is. It is just a very simple thing, and I did take me a very long time to figure out clearly. How bad. Secondly, this module, in comparison with CS1101S, is not just much harder, it is at a completely different level. The algorithms here I think is not as hard as in CS1101S, as you don't have the feeling that even you are given more time, things are still very hard to change. The problems are very different. In CS1101S, you know what you can do, and you just need to figure out how to solve the problems with just that. It was kind of like that. In CS3216, the problems is harder, but there are a lot of them. And in this module, you don't know what you can do. Actually, now I think you can do almost everything. The problem now is divided in 2 parts, trying to find out what you can do and do with that, or figure what you 'need' to can do and find out how to do them :-). And from now, things begin too stressful. The key problem with me lies inside the process of finding information and figure out new things on my own, which I found very hard. Partly because of my bad English. Partly of my laziness of reading in English. Lastly I find it too stressful reading 'too much' words in the articles. Furthermore, examples in Maths and in Programming can be very different at times. And one important thing, I have the habit of skipping the theory part, just reading the example and take a fast look at the theory and figure out the idea. Programming is rather hard. The codes may vary from people to people. And it somewhat requires experience. And when I studied this module, I studied html, and it is linked to javascript, and then to php, them mysql, html dom,.... and many more. Other than that, trying to figure fbml, api, fql,... Too much things, so little time.


About the group work as well. My group work's is not very efficient. The programming split is not a good thing. At first I know by my instinct that the work will run more smoothly and effectively if the programming work is devided by specialization, namely one can handle all php,javascript,fbjs another handle html, fbml, css, layout, and the last handle mysql,fql,api. But still, my group divided the work by pages. By this kind, the work is slower and harder, but I think that each person can learn more in this way. Fortunately, Jonathan has this thought as well, how wonderful. Actually, at first, the programming split was very messy, we needed to ask another first whether he was working on something before doing. But after the second lecture, things become easier, although still a little blur, as knowing and doing is a different thing. But the programming division did improve after the second lecture. It's as prof said, 'the learning is in the doing', go get your hand dirty and you will figure it out and improve after some time.