I wanted to apply the circle function and also exploit symmetry
as I did with Z. This also went quickly, because I could reuse
pieces of code I had written for the other letters. I enjoyed it
and felt accomplished. There weren't really any problems with
this letter since it was the 7th I'd designed.
This one went really quickly. Although I tried to find letters
originally I could put an interesting spin on, I realized that
a typeface should probably have some consistency. This made me
think of adapting my F into a P. I felt pretty accomplished in
doing this one because I again used the circle function, but I
required significantly less testing to choose the arguments
for it correctly.
I enjoyed doing the problem set yesterday, and since I'd only
made one commit, I thought I'd do three more letters to get
to the four commits for the problemset. I continue to have
a bit of difficulty with taking the perspective of the turtle
to know whether one of the arguments for the circle function
should be negative. I tested it every time I made a change,
primarily when I made a segment and turned, so that I could
quickly adjust if necessary. It ended up going pretty quickly!
I accidentally missed the part where I was to submit after each
letter. Sorry! I'll answer the prompt for all 4 letters.
A:
I realized while it was easy to draw any line segment by hand, it
was not immediately obvious how I might draw a line of any slope,
as opposed to a slope of 0, -1, 1, or undefined, using the tools
I already had. I happened to know it involved the inverse tangent,
so it was just a matter of googling whether that was already a
function in Python. I was excited that I knew the mathematics
I needed to figure out the angle I would have to rotate, but did
wonder I how would've felt had I not know how to transfer to
the computer what I had first sketched on paper.
J:
Since I had done all straight lines with A, I wanted to use
the circle function in this letter. The documentation you provided
on it mentioned that the radius was the distance from the starting
position to the center of the circle that was left of the turtle.
I found, in both A and J, I had difficulty understanding whether
to turn right or left and by what angle from the perspective of
the turtle. I was actually a bit frustrated with this letter, and
I found myself at various times rotating my head, body, and
computer to figure it out. I falso figured out, through trial and
error, that I could specify a negative radius if I wanted the
center to be to the turtle's right. I would change a parameter,
run the program, and decide if it needed further changing or if a
different parameter needed to be changed.
Q:
For Q, I opted to use straight lines, but I decided I wanted a
vertical bar through the open space of the Q. I was inspired by
the set of rational numbers, but I forgot it was through the left
side instead of the right, although I ended up liking the way it
came out. I started with the simpler problem of making a Q without
the bar first. It was only after I figured out how to make a
regular Q when I figured out where and when to the put up or down
so I could draw a vertical bar through it without having
overlapping segments. One thing I noticed as I was writing was
that the way I made the sort of elliptical part of the Q could
be rewritten as a for loop iterating 4 times, which worked for the
case of the normal Q. I was originally excited about getting the
opportunity to use a for loop, but it didn't make sense to loop 4
times when I needed to move the pen up and down on the right side
only as I drew the vertical bar. It was briefly annoying that my
idea to use a loop for the entire Q besides the tail didn't work,
but it was a fairly quick adjustment, since I could still have it
loop twice on the left side that remained the same in the original
version and what I ended up with.
Z:
I was really proud of how I did my Z! I chose a symmetrical design
for it, so I was able to write half the letter out in a for loop
that ran twice to do it. Being intentional about the way I
designed the Z paid off in the relative ease in which I was able
to write the code for it.
Cory Dean Chung
cchung