Thursday, May 9, 2024

Dino Programming



 

When it comes to programming or coding, I have a little experience. I have dabbled in the Microsoft Excel program, which made me want to learn more. Seeing the basic coding that Scratch touches on was great, but it was a little silly to me since it was cartoony. Below is a link to the small program I created using Scratch.
 
As I opened the program, it took me some time to understand what I needed to do to begin a project. I don't learn from reading, so I had to dive into creating immediately to know how the program runs. I decided to have a minor interaction with two dinosaurs. My daughter loves dinos, so this would be a great project to show her. I plan to add to it, but I need to learn more. It took me some time to understand how the coding flows when you have two different sprites. One encounter I have come across and still can't figure out is how to get everything to return to its original position—each time, I had to move the sprite and change the appearance back. One insight I was able to see was the importance of timing. You need the code to have a wait time; otherwise, you can have two actions at the same time that you did not intend to happen. In my case, one dino started moving his head to look around before the other asked him a question.
 
Programming language is the ability to cater to the unique needs of different users and applications. I am still new to this, and currently, I don't fully understand. What I have grasped is that there are generally two types. The first language is used for system programming, where performance is crucial. The second is High-lever language. Some programs are C++ and Java. This language allows programmers to focus more on the structure of applications.