Hooray for confusion?!
I still don’t know if we’re staying on the university track
or switching to Python, and (probably) won’t until after Thanksgiving
Break. Either way, we didn’t switch to
anything this week. We continued
programming in Scratch instead.
The main focuses this week, if I remember correctly, were
Loops and Lists. Loops in Scratch are
chunks of code that are repeated multiple times- effectively a space-saving
measure. Additionally, the “forever”
block can be used to repeat something forever, and similarly the “forever if”
and “repeat until” blocks can be used to repeat something depending on external
conditions.
Lists are basically a type of variable. Unlike standard variables, which contain an
element (perhaps a word) that is basically indivisible, lists contain several
elements (perhaps letters) that can be manipulated individually. Another way, then, of looking at lists is as
a collection of variables, a “basket” that variables can be added to and
modified within; this is the more intuitive way of looking of lists. In any case, lists can be used to store
actual lists (such as a group of players) or- like variables- to keep track of
something within a more complex system.
