Learning is not Hacking

After learning the basics of how Karel works and operates I started practicing on a problem that was given to me through the textbook. It seemed very simple and I thought that I would try to jump ahead which was a big mistake that I made through this learning process.


As soon as I finished learning the basics I started to explore the code and tried to go through the material at an accelerated pace. That was a big mistake that I made as I started realizing that I was struggling as nothing worked. As soon as I asked for help from the teacher my mistake was quickly revealed. It became obvious that I was trying to rush through the material without learning which was almost like hacking but very poorly.

I had to go back through the entire textbook instead of just skimming through the slide show. This made me realized how much I actually missed when I decided to be arrogant and rush through the material instead of learning properly.

The entire issue started from me trying to create a sperate bot in a different class which could move around and turns better than a generic UrRobot. I had to create a public void command which made the bot turn 3 times to the left in a single line of code instead of having to type out 3 of them.

The mistakes I made while working on this project were an excellent learning experience for me and allowed me to understand the fact that I mustn't try to find short cuts in this class. I had made a goal for myself to improve as a learner and actually work through it properly and not skip majority of the material in order to progress faster.

Deja Vu in Learning

After finally getting over the struggle of installing Karel the Struggle Robot I had reached the point of where I needed to start learning. I had to use the sources I was provided with which were slideshows and a very good textbook that was given to me. It was obviously going to be difficult and would require some learning in order to progress through it and understanding all the basic commands and properties of Karel, Karel's commands and Karel's world.


Firstly I had to start by learning the basic objects that were always present in the world and had to be there in order to control the robot. There are Alleys, Avenues, 4 Directions, and walls. The first three are used for the bot to orient and the walls can be manipulated through the world editor in order to limit the space of movement or create a specific path that needs to be followed.

The second thing in the process of introduction was that I had to start by learning what were the objects present in Karel's world. Those objects included walls, beepers, and robots. Those objects were directly manipulated by commands that were coded into the robot. Those programs allowed to Karel to move and pick up/drop beepers that it carries. It was rather difficult to notice all the little details about it and small mistakes that can be easily made: Caps, punctuation and etc.

After observing all of this I now see how Java is very similar to what I learn in its learning method. It's a puzzle that I must learn in order to be able to go deeper into the code itself which is my goal. To be able to learn how to learn better and dive deeper into Java in order for me to be able to achieve my goal.

Karel the Struggle Robot

In order to begin my work on learning Java as a language, I had to begin learning in a program called Eclipse. Despite the fact of how easy it sounded to start this, it wasn't. The installation of the software was the first issue before actually learning and exploring the program.

As soon as I started attempting to progress, or so I thought, I ran into an issue of installing the software to starting the programming. The first issue that appeared was the installation of Eclipse. I needed to request help from some students that were in a class above me, AP Comp. Science, in order to install this.

As soon as I finally managed to install the application that gave me such a surprising amount of trouble I ran into a different issue, the fact that I needed more. I had to install specific add ons for Java in order to actually be able to install Karel and begin coding as well as trying to figure out how to use the application in general.

After just seeing how much difficulty I had during the installation of the software before even starting my learning I saw how I was struggling. This is able to give me a bit of a foreshadow into how difficult it will be for me to prepare for the course that I am aiming for in the future and this means that I will have to keep my goals clear and continue to work hard in order to be able to achieve the results I am aiming for.