Sunday, November 18, 2012

12-18 November 2012


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.

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