Doo-Wop Loop

Computer languages all share three essential characteristics; they execute some set of commands through sequence (one after another to the end, then stop), selection (if something is true, do this, otherwise do that), and iteration (do these commands until the cows come home). In Java, one of the languages I’m learning, iteration comes in three flavors:
- a for loop, where the computer is told to iterate a specific number of times;
- a while loop which first tests to see if the loop should be entered in the first place, then if it is, to iterate until some condition is true, such as freezing temperatures in some nether region;
- and a do while loop which is very similar to the while loop except it always iterates at least once.
Now, there is speculation in some circles, or so I’ve heard, that there is (or was) a fourth kind of loop that is similar to the do while loop and tends to be used only on specialized SATB computers (and its variants, such as SAB or SSATB). Here is an example:

doo {

} wop (soloText.compareTo(“friends”) == 0);

The SATB type computers are actually clusters of several computers, sometimes as few as four or five, sometimes as many as 20 or 30. One of the computers is designated the controller and will execute commands of considerable variety and complexity (not shown in the example above) while the other computers run the commands shown, over and over in a doo-wop loop.

Class Starts

The first three weeks of class has been nothing short of a drenching. From the fire hoses of instructors has come a tsunami of knowledge through which only now am I learning to swim. Since the classes are all primarily vocational in nature, as opposed to academic, repetition is key. Figuring out how much repetition is enough to learn, say, the syntax of the printf method (a Java programming thingee that formats what the user sees on the screen) or to become familiar with the lasso tool in Photoshop (great for rounding up pixels that need to be included when selecting one apple from many in a photo) is just as important. I could, and have, spent hours selecting and extracting objects from a photo, only to find it was too much; I should have stopped and move on. It’s all just too much fun.

The most visible of my classes for you, the reader, will be Dreamweaver and XHTML. The former is Adobe’s development tool for web sites and the later is the coding language that governs the layout of a web page. I have a web site: RuppOnline.net, where all of my Dreamweaver assignments are posted. The method for turning in assignments is not turning in paper, as those of us who attend school in the last millennium did, but to post to the web site. You see what the instructor sees. I am starting to join the 21^st century. I have latitude to add other items to the web site, so long as it is kept separate from the Dreamweaver assignments, so results of Photoshop, Illustrator, and maybe even Java will appear there.

Right now, all you will see is Lab 1, a simple set of web pages with things one typically finds on the Internet, such as text, images, video, and music. I’m working on Lab 2, which adds some more features and should be operational by the end of the day tomorrow.