Difference between revisions of "Class Journal Week 3"

Revision as of 22:53, 20 September 2015

Nicole Anguiano

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "Every character truly, truly matters. Every single stupid misplaced semicolon, space where you meant tab, bracket instead of a parenthesis—mistakes can leave the computer in a state of panic. The trees don’t know where to put their leaves. Their roots decay. The boxes don’t stack neatly. For not only are computers as dumb as a billion marbles, they’re also positively Stradivarian in their delicacy."
     • This quote is relevant for me not only in this assignment, but throughout the entire course of my learning as a computer scientist. So many errors are caused simply by a single character being mistyped. The number of times I forgot the / after the sed "y/words/words/" command was a little excessive. I've struggled through countless bugs that were caused only by the misplacing of a simple semicolon or space, usually only realizing my mistake after hours of struggling through trying to solve the problem. While I didn't experience quite that level of frustration on this assignment, it definitely came up. Rarely was my mistake caused by a mistake in an algorithm or the inability to think of a solution. Rather, the majority of the errors were caused by problems with the syntax. Seeing this quote made me laugh simply because of how true it is.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • It is easily apparent that computer science and biology are primarily male-dominated fields. Perhaps just because of my upbringing, I don't particularly view this as a serious issue. I believe that women can choose whatever they wish to become in the future, whether it's in a STEM field such as computer science or biology or not. I have been nothing but encouraged to continue along my path in computer science, and have felt nothing but support from my male peers. That being said, I do believe that there have been inappropriate comments made to me and to my other female peers that perhaps would have not been made to a male peer, and I have felt occasionally that my abilities have been underestimated, perhaps due in large part to the fact that I am female. However, I have always proven my abilities and proven that I am no less able than my male peers. Regarding the inappropriate comments, I believe that there are people who are unprofessional and inappropriate in every field. In my experience, the majority view me as equals despite my gender. While I have no doubt that there are those that have had very different experiences from myself, I believe that women can choose for themselves whatever career they want to pursue, and should be able to make that choice without being pressured to enter into any field, including a STEM field.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • At this point, I am quite comfortable with the command line. The command line is best learned simply through experience, and it can be awkward and uncomfortable to learn at first due to the incredibly simple user interface and lack of any real guidance. However, with experience (and googling!), the command line can be mastered just like anything else. To become increasingly more effective with the command line, I know that I must simply practice more.

- Nanguiano (talk) 13:11, 12 September 2015 (PDT)

Emily Simso

• Code is inert. How do you make it ert? You run software that transforms it into machine language. The word “language” is a little ambitious here, given that you can make a computing device with wood and marbles. Your goal is to turn your code into an explicit list of instructions that can be carried out by interconnected logic gates, thus turning your code into something that can be executed—software.
  • I think this code is relevant to the individual assignment because if offers a basic explanation of how code can execute functions and this week was my first exposure to writing code. For the assignment, we had to piece together different functions to create the order of amino acids from the mRNA. Our code could then be "executed" into proteins after being run through the commands. This quote helped me to understand how different instructions are used to produce the final product.

• What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
  • I think that gender issues are still very prevalent to STEM subjects, including computer science and biology. While gender equality is making progress in these areas, there is still bias present. People still assume that males are more equipped to work in these areas due to old bias and traditions linked to when women would stay home to raise a family. These issues still exist because people can assume that women will not want to work in STEM because they want to raise a family when, in reality, women are fully able to either do both or not raise a family to pursue their career. That being said, our generation is much more open to gender equality than past generations. At LMU I feel a great deal of support from male peers and professors to pursue a biology career, but I've been questioned from people a generation above me. I am excited to enter into STEM because I think every time a woman pursues that sort of career, it is a step in the right direction for equality.

• What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
  • I need a lot of practice to get comfortable with the command line. I think I also need to review all of the commands we've learned in class (and on the wiki) so that everything is clear in my head.

Emilysimso (talk) 11:17, 20 September 2015 (PDT)

Brandon Klein

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "A computer is a clock with benefits. They all work the same, doing second-grade math, one step at a time: Tick, take a number and put it in box one. Tick, take another number, put it in box two. Tick, operate (an operation might be addition or subtraction) on those two numbers and put the resulting number in box one. Tick, check if the result is zero, and if it is, go to some other box and follow a new set of instructions. You, using a pen and paper, can do anything a computer can; you just can’t do those things billions of times per second. And those billions of tiny operations add up."
     • This quote directly articulates the appreciation I further developed for computer science during this week's individual assignment. During last week's assignment, I manually performed a collection of algorithms that I have applied many times as a biology major: constructing the complement of a DNA strand through complementary base parings, transcription of DNA to mRNA, and translation from mRNA to protein. Although these algorithms are simple, applying them to the genome of a human being becomes an immensely more difficult task based on sheer quantity of information. The genome of one human is so immense that, as Moody articulated in his article "Digital Code of Life", a simple "bare listing representing these letters would require roughly 3,000 books each of 330 pages-a pile about 60 meters high" (7). Applying even simple algorithms by hand to this quantity of information would be a seemingly impossible, if not impractical, task. Yet the fact that we can indeed perform such operations is a testament to the sheer processing power of computers. The pipelines we created this week in the individual assignment may have been simple, but their application to even relatively short sequences of nucleotides immediately saved a great deal of time. It is this power that enables us to manipulate entire genomes.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • Issues of social equality are very dear to me, and I thus go out of my way to advocate gender equality when possible. As such, I find it very disappointing to hear of the gender disparities present within the field of computer science. Programming is a field driven not only by the specialized technical knowledge that is available to anyone willing to apply their mind, but also by the creativity that is uniquely possessed by every individual. When we discourage those who have the inclination and drive to pursue careers in computing, everyone loses. Unfortunately, the issue or gender equality is not much better in the field of biology. Although undergraduate programs in biology are often slightly female dominated, there is a lingering issue commonly referred to as the "leaky pipeline" problem. The higher up one goes in the study of biology, the more male dominated the field becomes. This is particularly apparent when considering tenured professors at elite universities or participants in the labs of award winning researchers. This pipeline issue is much more dramatic in computer science. Hopefully, this general disparity in STEM professions will be eliminated as time passes.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • As my prior experience with the program R suggests, I will grow more confident with the command line as I accumulate more practice. Using the command line from scratch is, at some level, like learning another language. The way the Linux commands will stick is by repeatedly using them and associating them with their applications. You can review and study these terms as much as you like, but only practice will really make the information stick. Thus, I am hoping to continue practicing and accumulating confidence with the command line as time passes.

-- Bklein7 (talk) 15:52, 20 September 2015 (PDT)