I have exactly zero experience with coding. Nevertheless, I was confident coming into this class that I would suffer only minor difficulties in picking it up. I figured that, after learning a few phrases and abbreviations, it would be, after all, simply entering different combinations of these phrases and abbreviations into a program.

I know now how misguided and arrogant that was.

Coding is, as Scott has pointed out, similar to learning a new language. But it’s a great deal more than that. I feel like I’m having to learn how to think in an entirely new way, and frequently failing at it.

My initial problem was coming to terms with thinking about the canvas as a graph, and I got some very useful advice from Courtney, who suggested that I draw a graph and plot my drawing on paper before entering. Still, though, it seems that many objects don’t plot where I think they should according to my numbers, so I have to trial-and-error it a little bit anyway.

I haven’t finished the first week’s dailies yet–I still have to do something that moves and something that doesn’t. My “thing that moves” is going to be a mouse, and I’m going to look at the p5.js examples of shapes and hopefully get an idea from them.

After being utterly lost and confused and frustrated in last week’s class, I’ve decided to spend some time reading the code and instructions and watching some videos in order to try to get a better grasp on what I’m doing and on how this stuff works.

I was also having some trouble getting my blog started. There was no “posts” folder in my directory. Joe helped me out though, and we figured out that, when you left-click on the directory in github on a Mac, you have the option to “open in Atom.” In Windows, though, you have an option to “Open in Explorer,” and then you are able to “Open with Atom.”

Now I have to figure out how to actually post this file to the blog.