Lab46 Wiki

Comments: Class and lab have been both exciting and somewhat intimidating. There was so much information presented in both and now I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. I have decided to try to break my Opus down to one main entry a week with a description of what I learned on each class/lab day.

Class
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Comments: I must say that the first week of class and lab was a bit overwhelming. However; the best part was writing my first C program (Hello, World!). Not that I understood all that was involved, but I learn better with more hands on. If I don't try something and practice it, I only understand it conceptually.

The Significance of what was learned: The introduction to working in Unix and beginning to write code in C was a significant moment in my computing education. I have completed projects in another class using VMware to operate in Unix and a few programming languages, but I think I missed the actual purpose of these labs. Like I have already shared, I can usually understand the concept, but didn't understand how it was going to be applied in future classes. After discussing this with the teacher from this previous class, I was able to understand how all those labs prepared me for this class and future classes. As of now I understand the concept, but applying this will be the next step.

Challenges: A challenge for me will be learning on two different operating systems at the same time. In class we are using Windows and the MinGW compiler and in lab we are using Unix and gcc to compile. I am more familiar with Windows and have only dabbled in another class with using Unix. It felt like a different world to me when in lab. As with just about anything new, there is some level of anxiety (which I don't tolerate well). I believe this will be another challenge for me to overcome, but with some time I will be more comfortable.

Questions/Confusion:

• I have no idea how to connect what we do in lab to the repository that we use in our class.
• I'm also struggling to find my way around Lab46 and trying to make sure that I'm doing what I am supposed to on time. I found due dates for assignments that weren't clear because our first assignment, Lab 0x0 Intro, was due on the first day of class. Originally, I thought the date meant it was assigned that day, until I found another lab that must be completed by 1/26/14.
• I have been able to use putty on my home computer and was able to access my cprog directory.
• I haven't attempted to write anything new. I had to take some extra time using the commands in Unix to navigate the system, but have found files within my directory that can't be accessed or that aren't active yet.
• For class, I have installed MinGW three times now due to errors and missing files. I believe I have them all downloaded and installed, but need to learn how to make a batch file to run it.
• I think I understand correctly that MinGW is a compiler, but I am not sure where we will be writing code. Will we be accessing Lab46 and nano in class to write code or will we continue to use Notepad++?