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midterm project

[edwemi-blog]

midterm

For my midterm I wanted to make a simple clock. So I decided to make a clock with the minimum of moving parts that come together. I decided to use a ellipse function because is it an easy applicable function.  First I would have to set an ellipse that moves along with the time. I would need a minimum of 3 variable for hours, minutes, and seconds.   I would need a variable for the x and y coordinate of the ellipse, that is would move with the time.  I remember in calculus that you can find  a point on a grid by using the distance multiplied by cos(x) or sin(x).  The x would the values that gets inputted and the I would need to figure out the distance of the point.  When I use that formula I notice that the code revolved around the origin. Since I had the clock in the middle I had to add half the length and width to the x y  coordinate of the ellipse. So now the clock ticks in the middle in a circular motion.  When running an arc program in processing you see that the arc starts on the right and moves along a clockwise direction. For the clock to start at the you had to substract half pi when setting the variables in the beginning then after that you project should run properly

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C programming

C was created by Dennis Ritchie in 1972. its a low level general purpose programming language. the language origin is closely tied to the development of unix. Unix is a type of operating system that originally used assembly. The developer of unix wanted to rewrite system but in another language. They considered to write the system in B language. But  B's inability to take advantage of some of the features, notably byte addressability. So that led to the C language.

They are many advantages and disadvantages with this language. the advantages are  C language is a structured programming language. This makes user to think of a problem in terms of function modules or blocks.  There are only 32 keywords in ANSI C and its strength lies in its built-in functions. the disadvantage of the language is that it does not have any object oriented programming capability. There is no runtime checking in C language.

Also the language is 43 year old many predecessor languages have taken concepts from that language. some may even argue that most modern language have been influenced by C programming.

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Learning Curve

Amit Pitaru stated a very good point about learning. We sometimes fool our self into thinking that some tasks can be easy to learn. In reality, they are many hours of practice that we must do to actually learn a new skills.

When learning a new skills, the beginning is usually the easiest part. For most, when beginning to learn a new skill, the person must be engaged. Meaning the people needs a genuine interested in the subject. That interest is fuel that allow people to keep moving towards their goal to continue. That alone is not enough to make us learn.  

When trying to acquire a new skills you must be realistic about the learning process. When learning anything in life, you must understand that they will be some difficult time. Most people, that transition for beginner to the more advance topic, tend to give up. That is because the learning curve start to get steeper and more difficult. 

the last part Amit Pitaru stated was that you don’t really know something until you can apply it. throughout the video you emphasized that he wanted to learn to code to make instruments. but just learning the basic was not going to help him. he needed to be able to apply his knowledge in a creative way.

His statement about the learning curve were correct. in my own experience, i saw that i would get excited to start a new project. if i was still interested i would put the extra hours to master it without complaint. if i was not that interested i would learn the basic to satisfy my curiosity.