Class Journal Week 3

Mahrad Saeedi

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • The quote I chose from the article: "Which is to say I’m not a natural. I love computers, but they never made any sense to me." This quote resonates with me due to the fact that this is exactly how I feel. I've always loved playing with technology such as computers or smart phones. However, I can't say I know everything about them, especially how they actually work. I know the complexity that goes into programming and coding and the capabilities of computer technology is endless. I always was curious of how exactly computers operated, but coding is like another language and can be quite intimidating.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • There are apparently many more males in the field of computer science than females. Through data acquisition from certain tech companies, it's clear that there are many more male programmers than female. However, the article demonstrates that females are no less competent than males in the field. As a biology major, there are definite gender stereotypes that exist in this field. From my experiences, men are seen as more capable than women, especially in pursuing a career in medicine. However, the gap between males and females in the field appears to be less than in the field of computer science.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • What helps me most in getting comfortable with the command line is not only practicing the specific commands, but knowing the specific meaning of each code. For example, knowing the "ls" input means listing the folders makes it much clearer for me to use that command. Also in class we should go a bit slower and concentrate more on the outputs the commands produce. I'm having a hard time using the "work backwards" approach, but I can see how helpful it can be. I would like to go over this process in more depth.

Nicole Anguiano

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "Every character truly, truly matters. Every single stupid misplaced semicolon, space where you meant tab, bracket instead of a parenthesis—mistakes can leave the computer in a state of panic. The trees don’t know where to put their leaves. Their roots decay. The boxes don’t stack neatly. For not only are computers as dumb as a billion marbles, they’re also positively Stradivarian in their delicacy."
     • This quote is relevant for me not only in this assignment, but throughout the entire course of my learning as a computer scientist. So many errors are caused simply by a single character being mistyped. The number of times I forgot the / after the sed "y/words/words/" command was a little excessive. I've struggled through countless bugs that were caused only by the misplacing of a simple semicolon or space, usually only realizing my mistake after hours of struggling through trying to solve the problem. While I didn't experience quite that level of frustration on this assignment, it definitely came up. Rarely was my mistake caused by a mistake in an algorithm or the inability to think of a solution. Rather, the majority of the errors were caused by problems with the syntax. Seeing this quote made me laugh simply because of how true it is.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • It is easily apparent that computer science and biology are primarily male-dominated fields. Perhaps just because of my upbringing, I don't particularly view this as a serious issue. I believe that women can choose whatever they wish to become in the future, whether it's in a STEM field such as computer science or biology or not. I have been nothing but encouraged to continue along my path in computer science, and have felt nothing but support from my male peers. That being said, I do believe that there have been inappropriate comments made to me and to my other female peers that perhaps would have not been made to a male peer, and I have felt occasionally that my abilities have been underestimated, perhaps due in large part to the fact that I am female. However, I have always proven my abilities and proven that I am no less able than my male peers. Regarding the inappropriate comments, I believe that there are people who are unprofessional and inappropriate in every field. In my experience, the majority view me as equals despite my gender. While I have no doubt that there are those that have had very different experiences from myself, I believe that women can choose for themselves whatever career they want to pursue, and should be able to make that choice without being pressured to enter into any field, including a STEM field.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • At this point, I am quite comfortable with the command line. The command line is best learned simply through experience, and it can be awkward and uncomfortable to learn at first due to the incredibly simple user interface and lack of any real guidance. However, with experience (and googling!), the command line can be mastered just like anything else. To become increasingly more effective with the command line, I know that I must simply practice more.

- Nanguiano (talk) 13:11, 12 September 2015 (PDT)

Emily Simso

• Code is inert. How do you make it ert? You run software that transforms it into machine language. The word “language” is a little ambitious here, given that you can make a computing device with wood and marbles. Your goal is to turn your code into an explicit list of instructions that can be carried out by interconnected logic gates, thus turning your code into something that can be executed—software.
  • I think this code is relevant to the individual assignment because if offers a basic explanation of how code can execute functions and this week was my first exposure to writing code. For the assignment, we had to piece together different functions to create the order of amino acids from the mRNA. Our code could then be "executed" into proteins after being run through the commands. This quote helped me to understand how different instructions are used to produce the final product.

• What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
  • I think that gender issues are still very prevalent to STEM subjects, including computer science and biology. While gender equality is making progress in these areas, there is still bias present. People still assume that males are more equipped to work in these areas due to old bias and traditions linked to when women would stay home to raise a family. These issues still exist because people can assume that women will not want to work in STEM because they want to raise a family when, in reality, women are fully able to either do both or not raise a family to pursue their career. That being said, our generation is much more open to gender equality than past generations. At LMU I feel a great deal of support from male peers and professors to pursue a biology career, but I've been questioned from people a generation above me. I am excited to enter into STEM because I think every time a woman pursues that sort of career, it is a step in the right direction for equality.

• What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
  • I need a lot of practice to get comfortable with the command line. I think I also need to review all of the commands we've learned in class (and on the wiki) so that everything is clear in my head.

Emilysimso (talk) 11:17, 20 September 2015 (PDT)

Brandon Klein

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "A computer is a clock with benefits. They all work the same, doing second-grade math, one step at a time: Tick, take a number and put it in box one. Tick, take another number, put it in box two. Tick, operate (an operation might be addition or subtraction) on those two numbers and put the resulting number in box one. Tick, check if the result is zero, and if it is, go to some other box and follow a new set of instructions. You, using a pen and paper, can do anything a computer can; you just can’t do those things billions of times per second. And those billions of tiny operations add up."
     • This quote directly articulates the appreciation I further developed for computer science during this week's individual assignment. During last week's assignment, I manually performed a collection of algorithms that I have applied many times as a biology major: constructing the complement of a DNA strand through complementary base parings, transcription of DNA to mRNA, and translation from mRNA to protein. Although these algorithms are simple, applying them to the genome of a human being becomes an immensely more difficult task based on sheer quantity of information. The genome of one human is so immense that, as Moody articulated in his article "Digital Code of Life", a simple "bare listing representing these letters would require roughly 3,000 books each of 330 pages-a pile about 60 meters high" (7). Applying even simple algorithms by hand to this quantity of information would be a seemingly impossible, if not impractical, task. Yet the fact that we can indeed perform such operations is a testament to the sheer processing power of computers. The pipelines we created this week in the individual assignment may have been simple, but their application to even relatively short sequences of nucleotides immediately saved a great deal of time. It is this power that enables us to manipulate entire genomes.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • Issues of social equality are very dear to me, and I thus go out of my way to advocate gender equality when possible. As such, I find it very disappointing to hear of the gender disparities present within the field of computer science. Programming is a field driven not only by the specialized technical knowledge that is available to anyone willing to apply their mind, but also by the creativity that is uniquely possessed by every individual. When we discourage those who have the inclination and drive to pursue careers in computing, everyone loses. Unfortunately, the issue or gender equality is not much better in the field of biology. Although undergraduate programs in biology are often slightly female dominated, there is a lingering issue commonly referred to as the "leaky pipeline" problem. The higher up one goes in the study of biology, the more male dominated the field becomes. This is particularly apparent when considering tenured professors at elite universities or participants in the labs of award winning researchers. This pipeline issue is much more dramatic in computer science. Hopefully, this general disparity in STEM professions will be eliminated as time passes.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • As my prior experience with the program R suggests, I will grow more confident with the command line as I accumulate more practice. Using the command line from scratch is, at some level, like learning another language. The way the Linux commands will stick is by repeatedly using them and associating them with their applications. You can review and study these terms as much as you like, but only practice will really make the information stick. Thus, I am hoping to continue practicing and accumulating confidence with the command line as time passes.

-- Bklein7 (talk) 15:52, 20 September 2015 (PDT)

Brandon Litvak

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • Quote: “A sequence of symbols (using typical keyboard characters, saved to a file of some kind) that someone typed in, or copied, or pasted from elsewhere. That doesn’t mean the other kinds of coding aren’t valid or won’t help you achieve your goals. Coding is a broad human activity, like sport, or writing… Code is inert. How do you make it ert? You run software that transforms it into machine language…”
     • This quote was compelling because it clarified and broadened my concept of code. It made me further realize that code is, fundamentally, just sets of text/characters that are put into action by software; code is information that is eventually boiled down into something that a computer can understand and execute. The quote (specifically, “A sequence of symbols (using typical keyboard characters, saved to a file of some kind)…”) reminded me of the portion of the week 3 individual assignment that involved exploiting genetic-code.sed in order to find the 6 reading frames of a nucleotide sequence. genetic-code.sed is just a file that lists a set of text/character combinations that happen to be interpreted by the software as a set of sed replacement commands that correspond to various patterns. The “code” kept in the genetic-code.sed, by itself and outside of the context of UNIX, is seemingly inert and worthless. However, in the context of UNIX and through the power of sed commands, this “code” was integral in doing some fairly incredible stuff (like creating several chains of commands that can convert a DNA sequence into an amino acid sequence).
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • CS definitely feels like a field that is heavily skewed towards males in terms of numbers but I feel that this gender disparity is slowly being improved upon. It is a great thing that many companies, and organizations, are spearheading initiatives (and putting down a lot of capital) to encourage women into CS and other male-dominated areas. I also feel that the general public as a whole is very ignorant of the facts/underlying principles of CS; more work should be done to further encourage public engagement and interest with computer science. I think that the gender situation is very different in biology and in the other life sciences. I definitely feel that the climate in biology (and in jobs related to biology) is more positive for women than that of CS. From what I’ve read and heard, CS and fields like physics are both very male-dominated and are often fraught with gender harassment.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • I think that practice and repetition will allow me to get more comfortable/capable with the various UNIX commands. Personal experiments and projects, however, will help me to learn how to use the many commands together (in order to perform more advanced tasks). Overall, I feel that I have made good progress, so far, in understanding the command line; there definitely is so much to improve upon/learn and I feel that consistent practice will strengthen my current understanding and permit me to do more interesting things in the future.

Blitvak (talk) 18:14, 20 September 2015 (PDT)

Erich Yanoschik

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • “What I’m saying is, I’m one of 18 million. So that’s what I’m writing: my view of software development, as an individual among millions. Code has been my life, and it has been your life, too. It is time to understand how it all works.”
     • The fact that coding and program development has been such a relevant part of my life and I have yet to comprehend how it works. I took a Visual Basics class in high school and MATLAB, learned a few phrases and could get a program to run once I understood the syntax and proper structuring procedures. I have always wanted to understand how it all works, how hardware converts to software. How data is saved and altered in the physical world. There are roughly 7 billion people in the world, most all benefit from the net in some way or another. There are only 18 million coders keeping the net alive and evolving. The main reason why I took this class is to gain a greater understanding of how it all works and find out where I could fit into the mix.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • The computer doesn’t see gender; all it sees is the input of the coder. The better software speaks for itself; the superior coders birth the superior programs. If a company wants to stay relevant in this day and age, the best software engineer should be chosen regardless of gender. This translates well with biology, the one who puts in the time required to gain the knowledge needed to succeed in the field will flourish. Although throughout history women have had a bias against them, for instance Rosalind Franklin had her work stolen and was used by Watson and Cricke to help discover the structure of DNA. The gender of the individual shouldn’t but often times does matter, it has been ingrained in our society that men are typically the breadwinners but this norm is slowly but surely changing. This is not to say if a brilliant coder or scientist and can’t communicate their ideas with coworkers then they might be in trouble.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • Practice, practice, practice! The command line is a whole new beast for me, I need to sit down and just start plugging and chugging. The more time spent coding will make the user more comfortable and soon it should feel like second nature. The readings and resources have been extremely helpful, I just need the time to let all this information sink in.

--Eyanosch (talk) 22:51, 20 September 2015 (PDT)

Kristin Zebrowski

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "The hardest work in programming is getting around things that aren’t computable, in finding ways to break impossible tasks into small, possible components, and then creating the impression that the computer is doing something it actually isn’t, like having a human conversation."
   • This quote really resonates with me because it's easy to think that computers are doing something like magic, but from doing this assignment it's very clear exactly how many steps there are and how important it is that they are done in exactly the right order. It's definitely not a comfortable thing for me, having to break down each little thing I want to do into a string of separate commands, but computers can't read minds or anything even close. As Ford said, computers are dumb--they have to be told exactly what to do. This especially relates to what we're doing with translating DNA sequences via coding because putting even one command where it shouldn't be (out of order) means you will not accomplish the task you set out to accomplish.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • It's very sad to me that there are still issues with gender inequality and gender harassment in the sciences. As a biology student I have only gotten positive support from male peers; in my classes, at least half of my fellow students are women, if not more. I feel like things are improving, albeit slowly--women are still far from getting the credibility they deserve, but I think we are taking a step in the right direction. This is clear to me by how many computer science and biology majors are female here at LMU. While in the professional field the sciences (I see this more in computer science than in biology, although gender disparity definitely exists in biology as well) are increasingly male dominated the higher up you go, I feel like science majors here get a lot of respect regardless of gender, and this makes me hopeful for the future.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • What I need is practice, and with that, I need time. A lot of learning the command line for me has been trial and error: it has taken a lot of getting used to for me to break down everything I want to do in sets of smaller commands and then to do that multiple times. So far I've found accomplishing something with the command line to be very rewarding, so I definitely want to become more comfortable doing it so it doesn't take me as long.

Kzebrows (talk) 23:26, 20 September 2015 (PDT)

Jake Woodlee

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "The code is the art." The commands we used in the command line to complete our individual assignment were all written by programmers at some point in time. Oftentimes disciplines like math and computer science are dismissed as dead uncreative studies in the eyes of true "artists". But if those skeptics were to delve deeper into either of those disciplines they would see the immense creative capacity of each and every programmer and mathematician. This quote shows that Paul Ford recognizes the creative aspects of programming, which I think is often dismissed in todays world.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • I think it is clear that computer science tends to have more males than females. Paul Ford lists the percentage of female engineers working for big tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc. and all statistics point to a percentage of about 30. Of course women are able to do the jobs, but I think there is pressure from society for girls to go into fields other than computer science, I don't think it is computer science itself that pushes away girls. Biology on the other hand, in my experience, has no unbalanced gender statistics. There are a lot of girls in biology and I'm sure that there is about an even distribution across both genders. I'm sure all the new organizations that advocate women in STEM fields will change the computer science statistics in years to come. All we can do is watch and wait.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • Practice makes perfect. I already feel pretty comfortable with it, but of course more exposure will make me more confident and effective with this awesome tool. To learn more commands all I can do is google and use Dondi's write ups, and eventually I will be able to call myself command line proficient.

Jwoodlee (talk) 16:15, 21 September 2015 (PDT)

Trixie Roque

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • “Coding is a broad human activity, like sport, or writing. When software developers think of coding, most of them are thinking about lines of code in files. They’re handed a problem, think about the problem, write code that will solve the problem, and then expect the computer to turn word into deed.”
   • This sums up what coding means to me in general: I think of it as any other hobby or activity, just like any sport, with different steps. How I did the individual journal entry and how coding works in my head is basically as follows: (1) I have a problem that I need to solve, (2) I write about how I will make a computer solve the problem, (3) the computer solves the problem for me, and this was my process of doing the genetic code assignment by way of the command line.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • According to the article, there was a time when the number of women in computer science was not this low. I would say that the reason for this all-time low is because the majority of the population now view the field as simply filled with socially awkward people sitting in front of a computer all day playing video games. This image of what a computer scientist/programmer is has made women believe that the field is boring or not worthwhile because of what various media made it out to be. Nevertheless, I believe that there will always be an uneven number of men and women in all kinds of fields. With regards to biology, since many would connote the word “biology” with the outdoors/nature, it would seem that it would be dominated by the females. From a computer scientist’s perspective, the number of boys vs. girls in computer science is outstanding; in any of my computer science classes, there is always more boys than girls. However, the boys, though they still show some immaturity, do not show as much as what the article suggests, at least here at LMU.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • Practice with the commands should make me more comfortable with the command line. They’re fairly simple enough commands to understand and remember so a bit more practice in using them in various ways should help me be more comfortable with what they do. I’m already familiar with handling files and directories using the command line anyways because of my computer science background since I’m required to use the command window instead of the simpler point-and-click action that most people default to doing.

--- Troque (talk) 20:33, 21 September 2015 (PDT)

Anu Varshneya

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
2. "*Every character truly, truly matters. Every single stupid misplaced semicolon, space where you meant tab, bracket instead of a parenthesis—mistakes can leave the computer in a state of panic. The trees don’t know where to put their leaves. Their roots decay. The boxes don’t stack neatly. For not only are computers as dumb as a billion marbles, they’re also positively Stradivarian in their delicacy."
   • • This quote is relevant for me in this homework assignment because there were a couple situations throughout the process that I made mistakes like putting an extra period somewhere it didn't need to be or forgetting to close a double quote. In addition to its relevancy to this homework assignment, I feel especially drawn to this quote because it summarizes almost my entire experience with coding thus far. There have definitely been incredibly difficult logic and understanding problems that I have encountered, but nothing draws the same level of frustration followed by euphoria as spending hours trying to understand why a relatively simple set of code is not working the way I want it to only to notice that I made a typo that can be fixed in less than a second. Coding has made me a much more detailed oriented person because I recognize the importance for every character and every space to be placed exactly where it should be in order for the grand scheme of things to work the way I want it to. It has also helped with my typing accuracy which has been a great skill as college has continued and the number and length of papers has increased.
3. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • The gender discrepancies in the sciences is an issue that I feel very passionate about. Since a young age, I have been incredibly interested in math and biology, but I don't think I fully realized the effects of not being properly introduced to mathematics and computer science at a young age until after I began college. Prior to college, I had not taken a single formal computer science course, though I did play around with the Khan Academy programming videos. When I began CMSI 185, I didn't notice much of a discrepancy between the men and women in the class as it appeared to be relatively equal. By the time I got to my Data Structures class after summer, I was alarmed to notice that out of the near 30 students in the class, only about 6 or 7 of us were women. This may be skewed as not everyone came to class every day and I may have noticed on days where there were especially few women in the room, the discrepancy between men and women is astounding considering the fact that LMU is 60:40 women to men. Though the intro level classes were well distributed, as the classes become more difficult and required more group work or more experience, it appeared as if fewer and fewer women felt confident enough to continue their journey in computer science. Personally, I think this trend could be combatted with more girls being encouraged to expose themselves to computer science at a younger age. Despite biology classes beginning as early as 6th grade for most students, however, I noticed a similar trend in my biology classes. My general biology lecture in freshman year had a majority of women, but at this point I feel as though the classes have begun to level out. The difference is not as extreme as what I experienced in computer science, but it definitely exists and is something that should be addressed as early as elementary school.
4. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • I feel pretty comfortable with command line so far, but I think more practice with different types of exercises and commands would make me even more confident. Optional exercises similar to the independent portion of this homework assignment would be great practice, and would help refine my google skills with regards to coding.

-- Anuvarsh (talk) 21:05, 21 September 2015 (PDT)

Josh Kuroda

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "You, using a pen and paper, can do anything a computer can; you just can’t do those things billions of times per second. And those billions of tiny operations add up." For me, this quote summarized one of the main reasons why we are taking this class that merges biology and computer science. This assignment in particular shined a light on this fact, and I witnessed the computer doing thousands of computations in a matter of seconds.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • As a computer science student, I think that gender issues are becoming less of a problem because of the increase in popularity that the field has been experiencing. Soon, programming will be as common among children as arithmetic and reading, and that will definitely make an impact in the workplace. I am not as familiar with the field of biology, but I am inclined to think that the situation is different solely because the study and research of biology has been around longer than computer science.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • I started the class with a pretty basic understanding of the command line. I knew ls and cd, but not much more than that. I am learning a lot about how it works and I like that you have the capability to access and view so much more with commands in a terminal. I am excited to exercise my command line skills and I will have to force myself to use the command line more often.

-- Jkuroda (talk) 21:14, 21 September 2015 (PDT)

Kevin Wyllie

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "You can make computers do wonderful things, but you need to understand their limits. They’re not all-powerful, not conscious in the least..Making them seem infinite takes a great deal of work from a lot of programmers and a lot of marketers."
   • This reminded me of something Dondi said in class: "The computer cannot read your mind." I think there is certainly a tendency for us - especially people of my generation who were raised alongside computers, to see computers as magical, semi-sentient brainiacs, when really, humans are the brainiacs. Later on, Ford refers to computers as "dumb rocks," which was both hilarious and insightful. I thought this applied to me over the course of completing this assignment because, having absolutely no prior computer science experience, I did often catch myself demanding things from the computer (when things didn't work as I hoped), when really I was the one who had not provided the necessary information. Again, lacking a compsci background, I was often in situations where I almost had it right - I was just missing a pair of quotation marks, or maybe I forgot to include the name of the actual file that I wanted to operate on. I guess my point is that it's very easy to forget that computers are a human invention, which still rely on competent humans to function properly. Any semblance of autonomy we see in computers is really just a reflection of ourselves, as a consequence of observing something that we created.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • I think the last sentence in the section sums it up: "The problem with women in technology isn’t the women." But I think this statement applies in general to modern society. Yes, the problem is exacerbated in the programming community because, for one reason or another, it attracts predominately men, and I imagine there's a certain mob psychology effect going on. But the root of the problem isn't something inherently related to the field of computer science or the specific types of people it attracts. The root of the problem is how males are socialized in this culture, which is an entirely separate issue. In the context of gender equality, It's hard for me to talk about first-hand experiences as a life-science major, because I happen to attend a university that I don't feel is representative of universities in general: the gender ratio of LMU's student body means that there are quite a few female life-science majors. I'm not sure if this is actually the case, but it certainly feels like there are at least an equal of amount of women in the life science majors as there are men. Nonetheless, from the perspective of an LMU student in general, unfair gender expectations are certainly ingrained in the social fabric between people my age.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • One policy I've adopted that has made this process much less stressful is to keep a "cheat sheet," on which I write syntax examples, since syntax is what I've struggled with most. I think it also is a psychological comforter to have something in front of me that relates to the material but is on paper instead of a computer screen. Aside from that, I've appreciated that Dondi's lectures are forgivingly paced so that us non-compsci students can keep up. In Phage Lab, freshman year, we used a lot of bioinformatics software, and I often couldn't keep up with the lectures. Falling behind and not knowing how to get to the page you see up on the projector is simultaneously so frustrating and so stressful, to an extent that I've never experienced in a more standard academic lecture. But so far, I haven't had this problem in this class.

Kwyllie (talk) 21:37, 21 September 2015 (PDT)

Mary Alverson

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • “Every single stupid misplaced semicolon, space where you meant tab, bracket instead of a parenthesis—mistakes can leave the computer in a state of panic. The trees don’t know where to put their leaves. Their roots decay. The boxes don’t stack neatly. For not only are computers as dumb as a billion marbles, they’re also positively Stradivarian in their delicacy.”
   • This quote resonates with me, and this assignment, because there is never a time when I sit down to code and type in everything perfectly the first time. On this assignment I forgot quotation marks and switched around some characters a few times which resulted in an error message a.k.a. the computer panicked. I also panicked slightly until I looked over the code to see my silly and easily fixed mistake. This quote also reminds me of an assignment I did in my CMSI 186 class. I spent days debugging it and fixed it (finally) mostly by identifying and switching small things such as greater than signs that should have been less than signs. Every character really does matter in code.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • As an orientation leader, I definitely saw the harsh contrast of how many girls were in my group (the engineer/computer science/math group) than the rest of the groups, even within Seaver. This made me sad, because one of my favorite parts of the LMU Computer Science program is that there are girls in my classes. This sounds kind of trivial when put in writing, but feeling comfortable in one’s learning environment is very important! One thing that I assume will be true of my career is that I will probably be hired by a man and work with many other men. I say probably because my mom works in the computer science field and had a female boss and she was even the boss of my dad for a period of time. Now, however, she has switched jobs and complains that all of her co-workers are men in their 20’s and 30’s. Even after over 25 years of working in the computer science workforce, she still has to seek out other women for support and also seeks out other women so she can help support them. My view is that computer science has many support networks for women once they are involved in computer science nowadays, but the efforts to get girls interested in computer science could use a little bit of a pick me up. I feel like this is less of an issue in biology, mostly because I don’t hear people saying it is (and this issue is widely acknowledged among computer scientists).
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • I am pretty comfortable with the command line at this point, but practicing is always helpful. After doing the homework I definitely am better at remembering the new commands that I have learned and also when to use them.

Malverso (talk) 21:42, 21 September 2015 (PDT)

Lena Olufson

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "The code is the art" quote really stuck out to me when I was reading the paper because I have never thought of computer work or coding as an art. It made me realize that everyone can be classified as an artist no matter what they specialize in. I like to think of coding as an art now because it is true; you type in some simple letters and symbols into a screen and it produces a certain image or images that are seen by the human eye. Every little detail matters and it is important to check your work otherwise the final product may not be aesthetically pleasing to those who view it.
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • I think that from a biology major at LMU's perspective I would say that there are definitely some gender issues in biology but they are not as prevalent as they once were. If you look at the number of women applying and attending medical school currently, the numbers are much much higher than they previously were even a decade ago. I am honestly not sure how the gender issues are today in computer science but I can guess that there are still more males than females in the field today judging off of the amount of guys to girls in the computer science classes that I have run into at LMU.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • I think that I need to just practice as much as I can. I need to get better at utilizing the tools I have such as my assigned partner as well as the availability of my teachers in their office hours. I need to put more time into figuring out exactly what to do and how to do it instead of always guessing or being unsure if what I am typing in is correct. I am not used to having something so precise on the computer so I need to pay attention to the little details more as well.

-- Lenaolufson (talk) 21:44, 21 September 2015 (PDT)

Veronica Pachceco

Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you

The quote that stuck out to me was the line, " If coders don’t run the world, they run the things that run the world". Every time I have to do one of these assignments, it amazes me that people not only know how to code but really master it to a point where they make their own programs, games, and system. These programs and software are what help society function. I work in payroll so I have used Oracle before. The author mentions that he worked on Oracle and I haven't realized before that someone had to create the system. It also emphasizes how being a coder also has alt of responsibility. The wrong mistake can be detrimental to the software running which can have a ripple effect depending on the program. I am not the fastest at coding ( which I now realize I 100% need to start on these assignments sooner) nor does it come easy for me however working through the different codes and commands through Terminal and even seeing Mary, my partner work in class, I am so impressed by how fast and efficient coders are. Coding and coders do indeed run the world.

What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.). From an LMU student's perspective, I see gender issues arise more in the computer science department than in the biology department. There is a lot of stigma of nerdy and anti-social that comes from being in the computer science field which I am not sure why that is since its currently one of the tops fields for the best paying jobs.There is also strong association between boys and playing video games which I think my view comes from. I happen to know a lot of men who are computer science majors and they want to get into game programing. So I always root for the women in computer science because I think the diversity is a key for expansion in the field. The best learning happens when there are people of different genders ( this argument also extends to race, sexualities, etc) because there are so many different thoughts and opinions that by working together builds a better, more effective community.

In the biology department, at least at LMU, I feel that the distribution is pretty good. I find that the male to female ratio isn't too off and that is even reflected in the faculty. I also work with a lot of female professors and staff which may be why I have this view. I think my views are very misleading though because I know that in the sciences overall that women do not have the same representation and are outnumbered. They are also given less opportunities which make it harder to succeed in the field. However, I hope for all science and math fields that there is more gender equality in years to come.

What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?

I feel that the more I can practice the more efficient I will be. Personally, when there are a lot of different patterns of number, letters and symbols on the screen its easy to get overwhelmed. Sometimes the characters all get scrambled in my mind which forces me to have to slow down and go over it maybe more than one time over. What i noticed that saying the steps out loud while I am typing keeps me on track. I am going to continue to use that method on top of more practice to get better with the command line.

Vpachec3 (talk) 23:02, 21 September 2015 (PDT)

Ron Legaspi

1. Pull out a quote from the first two sections of “What is Code?” that you think directly relates to what you experienced in the individual portion of this assignment. Explain why this quote is particularly resonant for you.
   • "You can make computers do wonderful things, but you need to understand their limits. They’re not all-powerful, not conscious in the least." The quote resonates with me the most because it was definitely frustrating when doing the individual portion of the assignment and the results of my commands were not the one's that I wanted. I feel that after watching Dr. Dionisio do commands during the lecture seamlessly, I felt that I would be able to emulate what he did when I went back home or to the library to work on the assignment. There are limits to what computers can do because Terminal or Putty can't talk to me and know my thoughts (my wants, my desires, etc.). Computers make certain tasks easier but we, as people, have to understand our limits and the computer's limits because I believe that computers are only as powerful as we can make them since we're the users/creators of such devices. I wish that I could tell Terminal to do something for me and could produce the results I wanted, but we are limited to typing commands (and even to that extent, commands must be precisely written or the computer application won't run, and the computer doesn't have the consciousness to tell you what is wrong or to fix the error in my typing).
2. What are your thoughts on gender issues in computer science? How different/similar do you think the situation is in biology? Feel free to speak from a particular lens (biology major, computer science major, LMU student, etc.).
   • Grabbing a quote from "What is Code?" the author writes: "Fewer than a fifth of undergraduate degrees in computer science awarded in 2012 went to women, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Less than 30 percent of the people in computing are women." The quote from "What is Code?" shows that there are gender issues within the field; moreover, I believe that field of biology undergoes similar issues when it comes to the views of men and women capabilities and potential in the field of biology. I feel that there's a stigma about computer science in which people just sit in front of big computer monitors typing lines of code to create programs or to produce video games; likewise, the biological sciences are viewed to be filled with individuals who are constantly running experiments living their lives in labs or in the field (environment). There is the idea that the fields are both demanding in nature and only a man can handle what a computer scientist can do (or what a biologist can do). Being a Biology major at LMU, it has opened my eyes to the many diverse (not just gender) individuals who will soon occupy the field of biology, which means that the fields are becoming more attractive and more open to women, to people of color, to people of different socioeconomic backgrounds, etc.
3. What do you think you need in order to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line?
   • After going through the two lectures we had about the command line with Dr. Dionisio, I felt that we were prepared for the assignments we had for the week. However, in order for me to grow more comfortable, confident, and effective with the command line; I believe that I just need to practice especially with my own laptop (a Macbook), which uses the Terminal app (very similar to Putty). It does help to know the commands and how they are written, but I feel that I need to get better at understanding what each command does and what outputs they produce when given information (in form of a file or manually-typed text). I feel that with better knowledge and understanding of the various commands and learning new commands on my own will help better my effectiveness in the use of the command line.

— Rlegaspi (talk) 00:02, 22 September 2015 (PDT)