Specificity

Specificity spec·i·fic·i·ty Noun 1. the quality or state of being specific. A good programmer needs to learn how to be specific and precise. Even the slightest bracket or comma that is missing will cause your program to not function. These activities today will help us to begin the process of learning how to be specific.

Task 1 - Discuss – How to Tie a Shoe Imagine that you were trying to communicate with somebody from another planet. They could speak English but did not understand how we do things here. Imagine if you had to explain to them using only words, how to tie the laces on their shoes. Where would you start? How would they understand you? Practice: with a partner, try to come up with a list of directions on how to tie your shoe. Keep in mind that you should pretend that your partner had never seen a shoe before and did not know what simple things like laces were.

Why define how we tie our shoes? Even the most simple activities need to be broken down into painstaking details when programming. It's important to start preparing your mind to look at activities in terms of steps. We need to think carefully about each step of an activity and think about how we could explain this (or program this) to occur again and again. TED TALK ON HOW TO TIE SHOES https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAFcV7zuUDA

Task 2 - Human Centered Programming Partner 1: You will be the computer. You are a "dumb" machine. You know nothing except for what the programmer tells you. You can't make any decisions for yourself. You must listen and do exactly what the programmer instructs you to do, nothing else Partner 2: You will be the programmer. Your job is to instruct the computer what to do. You must be as specific as possible to ensure the computer does not make any errors. You may need to try multiple times to get it right. You can both work together to plan out the instructions to "program" the computer.

Human Centered Programming Your first task will be to carefully document the precise human movements required to get down to the middle of the plaza. You will count exactly how many footsteps to take. Exactly what direction and angle to turn and exactly when you stop. You must define the parameters within which your object (the human) can operate (i.e. when & where to start/stop). You must also define the objects you will encounter along the way (i.e. stairs, handrails, etc.) Once you have completed this task - return to the classroom where one partner will then cover his/her eyes and the other partner will read the instructions to see if they can direct the partner back to the top of the stairs. Once completed, return to the classroom. Discuss - Did these steps work? Why or why not? How could you improve these steps for next time?

Final Task You will work with your partner to create a series of instructions to move from room A200 (the doorway), down the stairs to the plaza, out the door, across the lawn, and to the sidewalk in front of the new parking lot. You will need to document every single movement and step on paper and eventually submit these to Mr. Willard. Once you have completed all the appropriate steps, test your program and see if it works. Then you will need to write a 1 paragraph evaluation (as a group) of the experiment and note whether it worked or not; why or why not, and ways you could improve if you were to do it again.