Wednesday, October 28, 2020

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Computer applications allow a user to input information. Word Processors and presentations will let users format fonts and spacing as well as add pictures. Presentations have the capability for animations and slide transitions. Spreadsheets and databases let users create organized information. Spreadsheets have options to develop and execute formulas, while databases are meant to enable efficient information retrieval. This paper will discuss each application's advantages and disadvantages, the most appropriate application software for documenting a journal entry about a day, and scenarios that would be best for each application (Vahid & Lysecky, 2017)



Word Processors and presentations have an advantage when allowing formatting and adding pictures. They are easy to use, and a person can just start typing. If looking to customize the font, spacing, and formatting, both applications offer these functions. They both also easily integrate pictures. Presentations have the advantage of animation. This does make the presentation more exciting but also more time consuming to create. Spreadsheets and database applications organize data. When making a spreadsheet, the functions can be added seamlessly. This is extremely useful for large data that needs to be combined. Most desk jobs require using spreadsheets at some point, in my experience. Databases are good when making a website for someone else. Databases would not be a the right choice in every sitiation. A journal entry would be at a disadvantage in the database application from Microsoft's Structured Query Language, MySQL. It just wouldn’t make sense to use MYSQL for a day in the life, it is more appropriate for a store owner to record sales.



When starting this project, I felt that Microsoft Word, the word processor, would have been the best application for documenting a day in the life journal entry assignment. I found that the PowerPoint presentation was the best. I like how I could be more creative by adding animations and personalizing the slides. It became more decorative and showed my day with a little bit of humor. This fits my personality better than only formatting the fonts in Microsoft Word. I liked to see my day divided up into hours in Microsoft Excel as well. I was surprised to see how much time was dedicated to sleeping when I felt like I could have slept a lot more. Microsoft Excel, the spreadsheet would be my second favorite. The word document was the least favorite, after all.



Word processors are ideal for writing papers for classes. I especially like the options to format the references. I would not try to write my paper in Excel or PowerPoint. I use Excel constantly for work. I am in recruiting, so I create documents all the time with candidate information in each column. Excel makes it easy to include many statistics such as first name, last name, phone number, email address, state, and if they already initiated the background check. I can easily sort by the state to ensure that I have no candidates in states we do not hire for. PowerPoint is great for meetings. When I present data to the team or attend a meeting, this is an efficient yet attractive way to show all the information in a certain order.. It is also beneficial to show the data with a nice background and pictures. This keeps the meeting more interesting. A database would work best for organizing shop data. I have an Etsy shop, and I currently use a spreadsheet, but setting up a database will help me be more organized in the future. I would be able to easily input information, search, and delete it. This would be a great scenario to use a database. There are so many scenarios that each of these applications would the ideal fit. The options are endless.

Computer applications such as Word Processors, presentations, spreadsheets, and databases are literally a blank canvas with limitless possibilities. This paper went over each application's advantages and disadvantages, the most appropriate application software for documenting a journal entry about a day, and scenarios that would be best for each application.

References

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com/

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Tik Tok is video sharing application (app) that allows users to upload short videos of less than 60 seconds for other viewers to see. This app allows users with over 1000 followers to live stream and has social media features. The features include commenting and allowing users to like and send videos within the app as well as outside the app. It is free to download and relatively straight forward to use. It has 100 million Americans are monthly active users today (Sherman, 2020).

Tik Tok has great usability. Please see the screenshot with the directions of what each button links to. The thing I like most about this app, is that it is funny and I can look at the videos when I only have a minute to relax. The Videos are short, so I am able to actually take a second and laugh. I also love the recommended videos they suggest. They must have great algorithms, because they are quite accurate, at least for me.


My friends and I send each other videos all the time, so also am glad the app became popular enough that we can send the videos through the app itself. Please see the screenshot of the videos that we have shared with each other. This is even better than recommendations, because they are personalized recommendations from a friend that knows you.  First you find a video to send, then you click on the little white arrow on the left hand side of the screen. This allows you to direct message the video to your friends.

You can pick a friend, and the video shows up in their messages.  It looks like this:



The friend can click the videos and watch them. They can even scroll by swiping up and down through the feed, in the same way from the home screen.

My recommendations are that the searching for videos is nearly impossible. My classmates have had similar issues. They have also suggested parental controls. I saw that a feature was recently added that allows a person to bookmark videos, and this is also helpful. If you hear about a video, it is actually easier to google it and see the Tik Tok video on Youtube then  search in the application. If you click to favorite the video,  it is still impossible to find. I would suggest to have a way to save the favorite videos in folders. Then you can save videos in a more categorized way.

Another recommendation I would have is to create a tv version of the application. I can stream it to my tv, but it is still small. It would be nicer to have a tv formatted app that can be accessed like Netflix and Hulu.

My last suggestion is they fix the share to other applications option. Sometimes it sends the wrong videos if you send it through a text message instead of through the app.

Overall, I really like Tik Tok, and my review is very positive. 



Sunday, October 25, 2020

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When creating the Scratch game “Jellyfish Bubbletime”, there was a lot to learn. Please see the game created with Scratch at this website: Jellyfish Bubbletime.  It was interesting to see the way other people worked out the coding. I watched a video that that a child made, and based my game off of his work (Kids Coding Playground, 2020). It really made me think that if he can do this, I should be able to also put something together. I will explain the game, the difficulties, the insights, compare Scratch to other programming languages by describing the differences and comparing levels of difficulty, as well as describe which programming language is the most popular and why.


“Jellyfish Bubbletime” is a simple shooter game created in Scratch. It uses blocks of coding that can be dragged and dropped to create starts, stops, if then statements, sounds, and motion. Scratch made the coding so simple to use, and the possibilities are endless. There were backgrounds and sprites to choose from. I created the game rather quickly considering I have never tried to do something like this before. I wanted to create 2 different objects that could be shot at. I created bubbles for 100 points, while the hearts come to the screen less often, for 1000 points. I changed the speed around a little bit to see if slower would be better. I ended right back where I started, a level that seemed slightly challenging, but could be completed.

I had an issue with difficulty when I realized that my air was shooting straight through the middle of the screen, when it was supposed to follow the jellyfish. The spacebar would enable the shooting, but it only went right from the center of the left side of the screen, so while the jellyfish moved, the air shooting was stationary. I went through the coding on the air shooter and found that I had the correct x position, but the y position was not on jellyfish. Once I fixed this, it started to work.

This gave me some insight into the coding. I needed to be extremely careful with each block. It is important to double check every piece put down. It is also important to ensure that each part of the block is exactly right.  This program makes things simple, as does some of the other best programming languages.

When doing the interactive participation sections in the book, I found that manipulating the codes and testing it was the best way to see if it worked. Machine language is so impressive since someone even dreamed up the idea to program the central processing unit (CPU). Although it seems primitive now, it creates potential for further programming opportunities. I was able to use the binary coding to add 2 numbers and show on the output screen. Assembly language did the same thing but was more readable to humans. After this, the activities showed codes for high level languages such as C, C++, and Python. This was more complicated in the way that coding represented more possibilities. For example, input for assembly language was “01 101 000 000”. Using a compiler, the high-level language lets formulas be translated. Input was “x = input ()”. This allows programmers to program more efficiently (Vahid, 2017).

Comparing this to Scratch, it was similar in process. Put codes together to create outputs. It was quite different because the codes were laid out in Scratch in blocks, that must be dragged and dropped. Scratch also has libraries of backgrounds, sounds, and sprites to choose from. The interactive activities from the book showed simple inputs and outputs to display on the screen. The Scratch website allowed me to create an entire game. This is possible to do with the high-level languages but will most likely be more time consuming to learn. I imagine the high-level programming languages, however, would allow for more freedom (Vahid, 2017). Anything a programmer can dream up, can be made with the one high programming languages.

I found Scratch to be the easiest to use for now. It did look like this website was made for children to learn how to make simple animations and games. The cool thing about Scratch, is that is allows the user to get as complicated with the coding as they desire. If a person were to spend months, I am sure they could create extremely complex games. I think that if anyone were to spend a long amount of time learning any high-level programming langue it would become easier as time went on.

Scratch is a great tool to learn the basics of building codes with” if, then” statements. It offers the opportunity for someone that has never coded to create a straightforward game or animation. I am doubtful that most programmers would try to create complex social networks with Scratch.   If a person was attempting to create a complex application such as “Instagram” or “Pinterest”, then a high-level programming language such as python, C, or C++ would be the way to go.

C is the most popular programming language according to TIOBE (TIOBE Index for October 2020, n.d.).  The reason that it is so widely used, is that a lot of software is written in C already. For example, Microsoft, Windows, Mac, and Mobile are all written in C.  It is widespread through databases, including Oracle Database, MySQL, and many more. These databases are utilized by most types of businesses including banks, media, government, and many more (Munoz, n.d.). The reason C is so widely used is that it is flexible and easily controlled. Because so many strong bases of code were written in C, it is makes sense to build on top of this strong infrastructure, and that is what programmers have done.

Scratch took the codes and lets programmers build their own projects. This assignment was one of the best I have ever had to complete. I learned so much, and it was interesting to learn how to code a simple game. I have explained the game, the difficulties, the insights, compared Scratch to other programming languages by describing the differences and comparing levels of difficulty, as well as described which programming language is the most popular and why.

References

Kids Coding Playground. (2020, May 29). Scratch Tutorial | Rock Blaster | Easy Beginner. Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fqv4LNGOIA&t=419s

Munoz, D. (n.d.). After All These Years, the World is Still Powered by C Programming. Retrieved from Toptal: https://www.toptal.com/c/after-all-these-years-the-world-is-still-powered-by-c-programming

TIOBE Index for October 2020. (n.d.). Retrieved from TIOBE: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index//

Vahid, F. &. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com/