2018-02-10 - Parts of Speech: Articles

Articles are used to indicate which entity a noun refers to. The direct article (The in English) is used to refer to a specific thing while the indirect article (A or An) is used to indicate a generic thing. A is used when the noun begins with a consonant sound while An is used when the noun begins with a vowel sound. For example it would be "A house" but "An H".

Articles are actually a type of adjective but I wanted to talk about articles specifically before talking about adjectives in general because articles allow us to be able to completely describe a simple sentence. The main parts of a sentence are the noun and the verb. The noun said what did something and the verb says what that something did. The article helps to indicate which something is being referred to and although they aren't required they do show up often.

Next we will go back a bit and talk more about adjectives.

2018-01-20 - In IL: Loop Instructions

This post will be really simple because there are no IL loop instructions. As we shall see loops in IL are implemented using branching instructions just like the conditional statements we saw previously. The main difference is that conditionals tend to jump forward while loops tend to jump backwards so that instructions can be re-ran.

So the question is why isn't there any loop instructions? Well let's think about what these loop instructions would need to do. There is a large variety of programing languages out there and those languages have very different ideas about how they want their loops to work. In order for the IL loop instructions to be useful they would need to meet the majority of these scenarios which would require a large number of very complex looping instructions. So instead IL provides simple branching instructions that can be combined to create complex looping statements. Keeping IL simple and providing more power to languages that want to target IL.

Next time we will look at the simple while loop.

2017-08-12 - Don't Plan Outcomes

I like planning. It makes me feel better to know what I'm going to do, or what I have to do. I also find that having a plan for what I want to accomplish helps me to be more productive and that it encourages me to be more diverse in my activities. That being said I've found that you need to be careful what you plan for.

When planning it's important to focus on what you can control. I think people have a tendency to focus on what they want to happen. I'm going to get a job, I'm going to buy a couch, I'm going to finish this project. I'm going to win the lottery. The problem being that sometimes you don't have the ability to make what you want to happen happen. You can make yourself look for a job but you can't make people give you one. You can make yourself look for a couch but you can't make stores have the one that you want. You can make yourself work on a project but you can't guarantee you're going to finish it. You can buy a lottery ticket but you can't pick which numbers will win.

If you plan to finish a project and you don't then you have failed which can be bad for your motivation to try again. If you plan to work on a project then you can consider the plan a success as long as you actually did work on it, even if you didn't finish it. it becomes a lot easier to feel good about the effort you did put in rather then what you didn't manage to do. Then you can plan to work on it more some other time.

The other week I wanted to finish a chapter of the F# book I've been working through.  I ran into so many issues working through the examples that I wasn't able to finish. The version of the plugin the book was using didn't work with the version of Visual Studio I was using. The version of the plugin which worked with the version of Visual Studio didn't work with the code from the book. Even after I managed to downgrade the version of the packages to match the book I still had issues running certain examples. I only managed to finish the chapter because I figured out which parts were causing issues and skipped over them. Which goes to show that just because you attempt something doesn't guarantee you can complete it. Sometimes the universe conspires against you and it's not really fair to blame yourself for the universe.

So when you are planning things focus on what you are going to do rather then what you want to happen. It will make it easier to feel good about what you have done rather than feeling bad about what you haven't managed to do.

2017-07-18 - Parts of Speech: Pronouns

Pronouns replace nouns which have already been introduced or can be determined from context. They are used to simplify sentences and allow us to talk about something without having to use its full name every time. For example instead of saying "The head doctor ran down the hallway and then the head doctor slid into the operating room" you can say "The head doctor ran down the hallway and then she slid into the operating room". Pronouns are special because they have a lot more forms depending on the person, number, or case of the noun they are a replacement for.

The person of a pronoun refers to the relationship between the person talking or writing and what they are referring to. First person pronouns refer to the person or thing speaking or writing (I). Second person pronouns refer to the person or thing being spoken or written to (you). Third person pronouns refer to someone or something outside the interaction (he, she, it). The number of a pronoun refers to the number of entities being referred to. Pronouns can be singular (I, you, he, she, it) or plural (we, you, they). The case of a pronoun refers to how it is used in relation to a verb. Pronouns can be used as the subject (I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they) or object (me, you, him, her, it, us, you, them) of a verb. Together these simple forms of pronouns are referred to as personal pronouns. Not because they deal exclusively with people but because they change form based on the person (First, second, third) being used.

Reflexive pronouns are used when the object is the same entity as the subject and usually end in self (myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves). The possessive form of a pronoun is used to indicate possession or ownership (mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs).

There are also a lot more pronouns that can used in certain situations but these are good enough to start with. We may talk about the others at some point. Next time I want to talk about articles.

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