Week 5

Impression of Week 4:

     During the 4th week of the CSC148 course, the class began covering the topic of Recursion. This was my first time being introduced to the topic and as much as it was not covered in the CSC108 course it felt as if we were being given more of a review than an introduction to this method of programming. Going through the recursion exercises in class made things seem simple to grasp however for the following lab I was shocked to learn that we were expected to code recursive methods with only about an hour of introduction to the topic under our belts. I was very thankful that we were not expected to know how to code recursive methods for the midterm test, without first being taught in lecture, however this method of teaching was very disorienting to me. I found it much more useful to trace given methods and first form an understanding of how the program would sort through the algorithm by writing out the outputs step-by-step. By the end of the week I still felt as if many gaps were left within my understanding of the definition of recursion and how it functioned so I found it very useful to find more examples online and fully define what recursion was used for first before trying to jump into writing out the outputs. By taking this one step at a time approach and filling in all the gaps left within my understanding I ended up feeling much more confident about the material by the time the midterm test came around. Hopefully as the course continues we will be provided with a much more solid framing of various aspects of recursion as well as future topics before we are asked to apply the material.