CST338: Software Design, Week 1

Back to the (Coding)Bat Cave

It’s been quite some time since I’ve coded anything, especially in Java. Getting back into the rhythm of writing code took a little effort, but working through the Coding Bat challenges helped a lot. I relied heavily on resources like W3Schools Java Reference and PythonTutor's Java Visualizer to better understand syntax and visualize what my code was actually doing.

Before I even touched the keyboard, I made a habit of working through each problem on paper (my iPad).  Mapping things out visually helped me wrap my head around the logic before jumping into code. I quickly learned that diving straight into writing code rarely works well for me. If I don’t fully understand the problem or what the output is supposed to look like, troubleshooting becomes a lot harder.

One thing I completely forgot was how substrings work in Java. I kept getting tripped up by the index ranges at first, but after some trial and error, and a lot of printing out substring results just to see what was happening, it finally started to click again.

Once I had a solid idea of the logic, most problems only took me one to three tries to solve. The process that worked best was reading the problem carefully, thinking through the logic step by step, writing it down, and then translating it into code. What didn’t work was rushing into code too soon or trying to guess what would work by trial and error.

Overall, it’s been a good refresher. It reminded me that thoughtful planning, paired with the right resources, makes the coding process much smoother.