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Week 9 Learning Journal

 Week 9 Learning Journal

This week we started our first programming class using Java. I was a bit rusty with the language but working through the Codingbat exercises helped refresh my memory. The problems on the Codingbat website were somewhat challenging and my main strategy was to first understand the exercise problem. I would then break it up into parts and try to solve one part at a time. I noticed that with the coding exercises there is usually and underlying pattern and then it is a matter of layering the complexity over the top. I did however find myself in situations where my initial programming attempt did not work and then I would spend some time experimenting with the code to see if I could get the desired result. There were even times where I deleted my entire code and started over to see if a different approach would work. Most of the early exercises I could complete on the first try, but as I got deeper into the exercises I found I would often have to modify and reanalyze the code I had written.

For me, I think the best strategy is to have a general idea of what the code needs to do and work on piece by piece. 

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