CST 205 Final Entry

In CST 205, I learned the syntax of programming in Jython. I also learned how to manipulate images, sound and strings in code. Each week sharpened my programming skills and helped me learn key computer science concepts. I was able to strengthen my problem solving skills as several of the labs tested this.

This class definitely relates to my future career. I was able to make two simple text based games and the ability to problem solving for this is essential to my future career. I hope to enter the video game industry as a game developer so this was right up my alley. Videogames are full of images, text, and sounds so I believe that this course has allowed me to scratch the surface of the skills necessary in the industry.

I would advise future students to stick with JES 4.3. I originally started with 5.0 but felt it was too buggy and ended up extending the length of time to work on a project. Until 5.0 is fixed I would recommend all students stick with JES 4.3. Also, keeping and sticking to a calender is essential to turning in work on time and not getting behind. Students should commit at least 14 hours a week to this class. I did get behind a bit during the last week as it was during the holidays and ended up posting this a day late. My recommendation is for the first 6 weeks to keep to your schedule or you will be behind all course long. A suggestion for the course would be to have more tutorial or better in depth instruction on implement Python with html. I had never coded in html and it took me a long time to figure out how to get a variable written in python implemented in html.

CST 205 Week 6

CST 205 Week 6

This week I learned about dictionaries in Python. This seems to be a very usefull tool. A dictionary represents a mapping of keys to values. An example would be for mapping english to spanish words such as: 

>>> eng2sp = dict()

>>> eng2sp
{}

And then to add an item we would just use:

>>> eng2sp['one'] = 'uno'

To create multiple key-values you would do something like.

>>> eng2sp = {'one': 'uno', 'two': 'dos', 'three': 'tres'}

The order of key value pairs is random.

o see whether something appears as a value in a dictionary, you can use the method values, which returns a collection of values, and then use the in operator:
>>> vals = eng2sp.values()
>>> 'uno' in vals
True

I learned about using try and except in python to catch exceptions and allow the user to fix

the problem or end it gracefully. These are used similarly to if else statements.

Using the pickle module in Python, allows you to use other data types other than Strings and bytes in

databases. It translates almost any type of object into a string suitable for storage in a 

database, and then translates strings back into objects.