Paradigms!

Intensifying Tuesday, right?

Yesterday night, I spent my time improving my skills by using the PowerPoint resources on Small Basic, gradually improving my knowledge upon this program software. This morning, I arrived at the center earlier than usual, which allowed me to continue on this personal project. Once the session began at half past nine, "Jovial John" gave us a starter on Small Basic. The task was to use features we learnt to make the program say "(name) smells". Additionally, we also coded the program so it repeats the users name depending on how many characters their name contains. This challenge woke me up immediately as I have then come across a new feature known as 'For' and 'EndFor'.

As I have mentioned in the start, the day was incredibly intensifying. The "Jovial John" discussed with us the different types of languages such as visual programming language, mark-up language and script language. Although these types of languages are hard to understand, we cleared up our confusion by researching the definition and examples of its uses in a word document. Afterwards, everyone put definitions and descriptions into the Student Write Area with our initials. This allowed us to look at each other's work to improve our own intelligence on this matter where our weaknesses lie. Next, the epic "Jovial John" split the class into groups and we all converse about the reasons of choice of language. Examples I learnt today are: organisational policy, reliability, development and maintenance costs, and expandability. (Which are all found in the BTEC Level 3 Information Technology text book). After so, we quickly took a quick break and continued to experience the awesomeness of Small Basic. During this short period, I learnt the feature: 'Sub' and 'EndSub'.

New features learnt and applied in Small Basic

Moving on in this cumulative day, we embraced ourselves and learnt the teachings of programming paradigms from our master "Jovial John", (that was how he earnt his title!). We were taught procedural programming language, event-driven programming and object-orientated programming. We learnt the basic principles with the overall/general pros and cons. Furthermore, we also learnt new keywords such as polymorphism and encapsulation. Which is to re-use a block of coding multiple times and to hide certain codes for security purposes. At the end of the raining storm, I survived the apocalypse of "Jovial John's" fierce breath. For approximately the next 30 minutes, I spent my time recapping everything I noted down. I did this by researching the internet and using notes the "Jovial John" told us and combined the words to create the definition of madness. (Didn't really make sense but it's cool).

In the last part of the day, "Jovial John" briefly went through flowcharts and pseudocodes by showing us useful documents and links. The purpose of that was to prepare us for our future upcoming assignments. In the end of the day during self study, I spent my time getting any outstanding work done that the "Amazing Adam" sent me last night. I also started to look at flow charts and pseudocodes, and finally continue Small Basic as a result.

As a result of this intense day, I would like to thank and am grateful to "Jovial John" for spreading his teachings across this classroom. I have learnt a lot about program languages and I believe this will be useful when I start my assignments. Everything is starting to "click" in, just as "Jovial John" says.

P.S: I think I just jinxed it.

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Jovial John LAD

Jovial John LAD 2

Jovial John LAD 3