While ( I do loops)

Today was loop day. I finished up learning about if statements, and found all the answers to Friday's questions at the bottom of the tutorial page! I just hadn't read that far. As for loops, I found that they were also pretty easy, except for the last one. There are three different loop formats: For, While and Do-While. Essentially, For loops do whatever is in the parentheses and display the output. While loops is when the integer is true, do the following function. I'll have to revisit Do-While loops and work with them until I fully understand their use.
My current trend of doing the tutorials is to write a code that is similar to the tutorial yet expanded slightly, then incorporate some aspect of the previous lesson into the program. Because I was working with if statements before, I put an if statement into this program. The basic gist of it is:
It asks you for a number.
You give a number.
If you give a certain number it displays a message.
Otherwise it counts up by increments of 1 to the number you give.

After working with C++ for a good while now (actually only a week) things seem to be coming easier to me. I understand what functions do. The only previous coding experience was Visual Basic. The one difference between VB and C++ is that VB likes words/text whereas C++ has more shorthand codes.

More on Wednesday.

if ( friday == short day) {

Fridays from now until the end of ski season will be short, partnerless days. That's not always bad though, it gives me time to catch up to Max, but I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. I moved on to lesson 2, which is about if/else statements. They seem fairly simple and very similar to the if/then statements of Visual Basic, only then gets replaced by cout or cin or some other function. I made the mistake of trying to expand on the example program before actually doing the program first, but I don't think that it means very much. I was testing to see if and was a legal function (example: if (x >= 0 and x <= 10) }). If anyone has any solution, or knows the actual coding for that type of statement, leave me a comment... please. In the meantime I'll be doing the next lessons, so if that pops up before someone tells me, I'll emphasize that.

Now I need to figure out what to do for my two hours...
...and don't we need to write up "proposals" for what we're doing (<-- question for Richard)


The bad pun titles are always going to reflect what I'm doing... and they're not going to stop anytime soon. :P

//Day two

Today was day number two of the indy project. Today, I didn't do very much, but the little I did will help me very much in the future. When Max introduced me to C++, I checked out a tutorial site to get me on my way. I found out how to create a program, write the program to insert text and variables. It did not do all that much, but it was a good start. Today, I commented on all the lines, saying what every bit of code does in the program. As I said before, it wasn't very much but it will help in the future.
I also got a few books on C++, so I'll be looking through those as well as continue the Internet tutorials.

Computer Independent Study... Again!

It's time for yet another Independent Computer Study. This time it's all about software. I am working with Max this time. We each have our own ideas of what we want to do, so right now the hardest part will be setting a direction. An outline will greatly help here.

1. Coding
a. C++
b. C
c. Visial Basic
2. Graphic Programing
a. Maya
b. GMax
c. Wings 3D
3. Combining the two for a final project.

The project will be based mostly on the first section, the coding part. The graphic programing was a result wanting to modify (mod) an open source game that we each play. As far as I know, we're either going to do that, or make something from scratch. I believe that if we want to make something, we're going to have to mod something first. We'll see how this outline deforms as the semester goes on.

http://indyc.blogspot.com/ This is Max's blog. As you can see, he's already created something. Everyone has to start somewhere.

-Ethan