final essay cse p1

8/13/2019 Final Essay CSE P1

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Alec Foster

Period 1

11/20/2013

Unit 1 Final Summery

Softwares and applications do not just appear out of nowhere when it is

needed. Nor does a single individual write them (Even though that might be the

case). Multiple people with in a group write most softwares and applications and

that leads to collaboration among them. If there was no collaboration among a

group within CS, there would be errors within the final versions of everyones code.

Collaboration is necessary to get the most out effort out of a group. Some of the

best practices of collaboration is when everyones ideas are heard and the group

agrees on whats best for their softwarethat theyre developing. Whether it be

dividing long code into equal fragments for all group members so it can be typed

faster or handing code off to a group member that is more experienced in a certain

are of code are some of the best practices when collaborating to achieve the best

results.

When hired for a project, it is best to communicate with the client and get

their ideas and feedback. Without the clients feedback, you would never know what

exactly they were striving for or their main focus was. I personally did this in the

1.3.9 lab. Our client gave us their idea for a picture to compile for a product they

were developing. The product was a hybrid between a cat and a dog. My partner and

I quickly came up with an outline and procedure that we would attempt to complete

the product in. We also drew up some sketches of the product and chose the best

one that suited our clients needs. These practices let us know what we are doing

and what the end result will be before we even type a single line of code

There is no such thing as Perfect Code unless you are a god at computer

programming. Every once in a while, everyone makes a mistake and I was not

excluded from this. I have run into errors throughout CSE and the one project that

has had the most errors was the 1.3.9 project. My partner and I had borrowed the

beginning of our code from earlier labs so we could get a foothold on what we were

doing. After adding each successful task on our outline we saved a new version of


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the code so if we ran into an error we could not fix, we could go back to the last

known working version of the code. When we did run into coding error that we

needed to get past, I experimented with the line of code we were having trouble

with and eventually got it to work. Even though it took a bit of time to do it, we got

our project done on time.

Societal issues of computing have been around ever since the Internet was

born. Many issues surround computing like privacy, censorship and pirating.

Privacy is one of humanitys greatest rights but when it comes to the internet, it isnt

private anymore. Cookies track your history and clicks and Websites track what you

click on to set profiles on members and the right to privacy is suddenly out the

window. The same goes with censorship. Countries like China, Russia and N. Korea

all have their Internet censored so only stuff the government approves is showed.

Laws like SOPA and PIPA have tried to censor the Internet in the past but due to

public disapproval, they were shot down. SOPA and PIPAs main goal was to limit

the use of Internet and primarily target the piracy that goes on in the Internet today.

Still, I have yet to meet someone that has not downloaded a song illegally or hasnt

watched a movie for free on the Internet. I can see why this is bad and potentially

hurt many industries, but limiting the Internet is not the answer.

Computing has impacted many fields and technology throughout its

existence when it was first started making things easier for us. We can go to the

bank and withdraw money from an ATM and go buy the latest video game or

software. Computing has led to research being done faster like DNA sequence

research. Allowing scientists to locate specific fragments to find genes that cause

diseases or mutations in DNA. Information hubs can send packets of info to your

computer in a matter of milliseconds. Computing has enabled people to get

information faster than ever before, our lives much easier and made us smarter.

Abstraction is very important in CSE. It allows programmers to skip over the

little details in code and focus on the main bits of a line of code. An example of

abstraction is an old-fashioned clock. The generalization of the clock is the numbers,

the frame, and the hands of the clock. That is really all I care about in the clock

because that is only needed in the telling of the time. Abstraction allows the


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batteries that power the clock and gears that move the hands to be skipped over.

Those are inside the clock and unless I dig around in the clock, I will not see them.

The little gears that move the hands of the clock are like how lines of code are saved

or how it is translated into binary for the computer, those are the little details that I,

as a programmer do not need to worry about.

Throughout the CSE course, I have encountered only one huge problem.

That problem is actually writing code instead of getting bits of code from the board

or copying bits from other labs to get the job done. As a beginner programmer

stating the class, I did not like it. It was not at all how I pictured programming to

begin with when we tried scratch and AppInventor, but as we continued through the

course I finally was beginning to understand that the programs were really helpful

and as we moved into python, It grew incredible confusing. Computation could help

solve the problem with programs that gave you tips and analyzed your code to try to

find the best and fastest way to execute it. Programs like this would give people like

me confidence to attempt my own code writing and try to learn more about python

in the end.

final essay cse p1

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