Strings

Strings seem to be one of the most frightening concepts in CS (according to my peers), and I kind of agree and disagree. Over the weekend, as I attempted to finish all of the CodingBat exercises, strings proved to be nothing short of complicated and confusing. However, the one thing I love about CodingBat is that it tells you when you have an error and WHY. Furthermore, when you run your program, it shows you which tests work and which ones don't, allowing you to decipher what was wrong in the first place. After hours of banging my head against the wall, I finally decided to surf the web to find out exactly how strings work. Strings are sort of like those magnets that you can attach and rearrange into different forms. I read about substrings and string lengths and tried them out on CodingBat. Learning and then applying was kind of like a trial-and-error process, because I simply didn't know how to dissect a string and rearrange it. Luckily, as I tried and failed, I learned from my mistakes and I was able to get through each exercise, one at a time. The whole process, albeit more than a little frustrating, was a great learning experience for me. I learned that you're not always going to get everything the first time, and that it's always good to go the extra mile by taking an interest in the subjects that you're learning as opposed to just memorizing little tidbits of information. While the concepts may be difficult to comprehend at first, once you let the knowledge sink in, the whole subject turns out to be quite fascinating. During class, I always find it a bit intimidating when my classmates know exactly what to do instantaneously, while I struggle just knowing where to START. A lot of people in CS seem to already have a background in programming Java, Python, etc. while I had no idea what I was getting into in the first place. Anyway, I'm super grateful that we are using CodingBat, because I believe that practice is key to succeeding in this class. I just have to keep working at it. Java may seem frustrating and tedious at first, but in the end, the reward is more than satisfactory.