Reading Response 4-Caleb Haydock

Like most everyone else, I thought this reading made the ideas in it, which we are suppose to learn, more complicated then they actually are.  When Fuller talks about functions he makes it clear that a function is a small bit of code that can be used again and again.  They are the small structural pieces of a code that build of the one that came before it and also simplify the rest of the code that comes after, acting as "simple, deterministic machine" (105).  What began to confuse me when Fuller explained variables as boxes because In my head as I was trying to comprehend all the analogies he was using,  I began to see functions as the boxes.  Again, variables are something we all know and understand.  Even if it is different from mathematics and science, It still can be understood with the old definition of it that we all understand.  Variables are the labels/names of the values that can fit with that specific variable.  

When Fuller explained Loops and Lists (that was my other one I read)  I think I got the general outline of their "functions" since they are both examples of a function.  A list is a group of smaller bits of information  that are ordered.  Just like if someone asked us for a list of things we needed at the store, a list in the programming sense orders and classifies the information that both, goes together and is needed at a given time.   Loops seemed the most complicated of the bunch, but what I got out of it is that a loop is a command that repeats its function as many times as instructed in the code.  Fuller seemed to really love loops and stressed their importance to make a code simpler, and time-efficient.  He also stressed how easy it is to make a mistake in a loop which can be a huge detriment to a code's final output.   

Overall, this reading was helpful when giving me some of the top tools to use in programming.  It might have been confusing in parts but the way Fuller explained it they are all part of a different language that is no different from any other language.  So just like I know I would not able to sit down and read a book that is all in Italian, I don't expect to fully understand these terms/tools and how they relate in the programming word.