Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Week 2

Comments on 7 languages in 7 weeks by Tate:

Io mainly involves the use of objects. More specifically they clone the objects as needed. Io is also considered a prototype language.

Installing Io:

Installing Io was not bad. I am currently running Ubuntu 11.10 on a virtual box within my Windows 7 machine. I went to iolanguage.com and downloaded the deb package for 32 bit linux. The installation went smoothly.

After day one of using Io, it seemed fairly straight forward. The main concept I’m having trouble wrapping my head around is inheritance. I don’t understand how or what a child inherits from its parent. I also did not understand why we were creating a clone from another clone.

Self-Study

Examples: http://iolanguage.com/about/samplecode/

Community: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/iolanguage/

Style Guide: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Io_Programming/Io_Style_Guide

 

The while statement format is familiar to me as it is similar to java.

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This made no sense to me 

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Overall review of Io:

Io is like object oriented programming except there are no classes.

The cool thing about Il was that you could change it a lot. You can change the contents of a slot. It’s pretty flexible.

I don’t know if I would choose Io for programming as there is not much of a support group, unlike other languages that have a large community base.

The syntax is fairly easy, meaning it’s not that hard to catch on to what’s going on.

 

Comments on Code by Petzold:

Chapter 10

Going over the math was not fun. I went down memory lane with the associative, distributive, etc. properties. Much fun!

I learned that “+” in Boolean algebra means OR, and “x” means AND.

When going through some of the equations that were shown, I was confused at first with equations like:

                F + F = F

X squared = X

Overall + is OR, x is AND, 1- is NOT.

ANDDING

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OR

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Now when we look at circuits we can see ANDING like this:

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Now when we look at circuits we can see OR like this:

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Chapter 11

An interesting thing I learned was that relays can be used to switch other relays on or off. Relays are used to amplify weak signals. I’ve read in the past that relays can do this; however, seeing it visually with pictures really helped. It talked about how wire wrapped around a rod connected to some source of energy can create a magnet. And that magnet can be used to turn a switch on or off. Like I mentioned before, seeing it visually really helped in understanding the concept.

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Besides learning that concept, this was a tough chapter to read through…

 

Chapter 12

I learned how computers add. In addition, I learned that computers no longer use relays, they now use transistors which are smaller, faster, quieter, and use less power as compared to relays.

Chapter 13

I really liked this quote, “Subtraction is merely addition using negative numbers.” When I perform subtraction in my head, this is exactly what I do. I learned that binary numbers can be signed or unsigned; however, you will not know off hand unless someone told you that it is signed or unsigned. Unsigned 8-bit includes 0-255, while signed includes -128-127

Chapter 14 and 15

I started to see how and why we have 32-bit and 64-bit machines. It was also nice to review hexadecimal again…

Chapter 16

I liked this quote, “We write and we later read. We save and we later retrieve. We store and we later access.” This quote exactly describes what RAM is for.

For most, we add RAM to our computers to make if faster. It was interesting to go over how memory is built and how it works.

RAM is volatile memory in that when power is no longer supplied and the magnetism is gone, then the contents of the RAM are gone as well.

Chapter 17

I agree that some people find coders as a derogatory name and that software engineers is a better one.

Chapter 18 and 19

1928 – Famous line “do not spindle, fold, or mutilate” your IBM card

1935 – First relay computer – Conrad Zuse

1939 – Complex Number Computer – George Stibitz

1943 – ASCC (automated sequence controlled calculator) – Howard Aiken

1944 – First case of a “bug” – a moth found in a relay

1945 – Complete transition to vacuum tubes

1948 – Norbert Wiener coined the word “Cybernetics”

1974 – Intel and Motorola released microprocessors