Software development

Had my first Software Development class today and I have to say, I like the class. I already really like programming so there was no doubt on the subject, but I wasn't so sure about the class. The smart-ass from IPT isn't doing SD, so the lesson gets along faster. Unlike the other classes so far, we actually got started on programming. Part of that is because there are a lot of people who are just starting out with programming and didn't do IST last year so they don't know anything and need to get the basics down. After a brief explanation of the course and that it's Software only, he got us started on a simple program, finding the average of six numbers. Very simple, but the point of it was to show that you need to tell it to do everything, such as displaying the average after calculating it.

Right now, the class is around 15-20 people, but I'm sure that that is going to change very soon. The year 12 class used to have around 20 people, but now has 5. I'm very excited to actually get started on the programming, but he did say that we'll only be using small basic for the first six months, which is kind of sad. The problem with small basic is is that it's a basic language with limitations.

I did a programming challenge last year, and I used small basic for it. I don't exactly remember the question or what I had to do, but it had to do with the fact that small basic didn't have different variable types such as lists, strings and integers, which kind of screwed me over. That's why I used python for the assignment that year. I'm also planning to use python for the major project this year.

Having previous experience with programming really helped, even if I had no idea what I was doing at that time. When I was doing python before, I literally had no idea how anything worked or why it worked or anything. But now I understand that programming is just a very fine-tuned set of instructions for the computer to follow.