Day 5 System I/O

Today was a fun end to the end of the first week. In class we learned about input, parsing the input into other data types, and running java programs from the command line. Though some of this was also review for me, I found it more stimulating than the last few days. Toward the end of the lesson, we made a tic-tac-toe game which used our new knowledge of input as well as arrays and if statements. I tried to work quickly on this game on my own, but other students had suggestions which I didn’t consider and which made the code cleaner and more efficient. Brian worked pretty quickly through the creation of this game, adding additional functionality once we created the basic program. This pace was challenging and fun.

Today we were also assigned our first pair programming exercise. I have never done pair programming before. Brian explained it as working on one computer with one person “driving” and the other “navigating”. The person who has the ideas is not the person typing, which neccesitates strong teamwork and communication. Jared was my partner and we worked pretty well together. I was surprised at how natural it felt to program in that way. Brian told us that studies have shown two programmers working in this way are more efficient than two working seperately. After just one experience, I can see how this is the case. I’m looking forward to the next pair programming exercise.

As I write this, I am about to head to Endeavor Brewing to celebrate our first completed week with everyone from Tech Elevator. Cheers!