STEAM Coding - TurtleStitch

Hi everyone, I would like to introduce you all to my social media accounts for updates on my TurtleStitch activities. The link for my Twitter is here:  https://twitter.com/steamct The link for my Instagram is here:  https://www.instagram.com/ steam.ct/ I will post photos of my current progress and my work on those accounts so feel free to follow me. Best, Jennifer L

Putting up my work was an accomplishment for me. I loved sharing my work with people around the school and a lot of friends came up to me and wondered about what I was doing. They thought it was really amusing and wanted to learn more about TurtleStitch. Some people were confused about how I was able to print out my code so I explained to them and they were really interested. I will definitely put up more of my work in the future to show my progress and by the end of the school year, I will have a collection of my work!

Today, I printed out the codes from my previous blog post. This reminded me of my experience last year with the machine, except this time, I feel a lot more experienced with it. It was amazing seeing the digital fabricator in motion again and I uploaded a few photos for you all to check out! Next blog: During my MIT Scratch presentation over the summer, the question I got asked the most was how I was able to connect the coding with the machine, so I would like to discuss with you what my experiences have been. Stay tuned!

When commenting on a code, it is easier to understand how certain blocks add to the entire code. With that in mind, I decided to play around with the variables from the  "769 commented"  code and here are the ones I came up with: Changes made: set max_stepsize to 10 set  len  to 20 repeat: 30 max_stepsize/ 5 reps + 2 turn 225 degrees len  + 6 Changes made: set max_stepsize to 10 set  len  to 20 repeat: 20 max_stepsize/ 2 reps + 2 turn 120 degrees len  + 6 Changes made: set max_stepsize to 30 set len to 10 repeat: 60 max_stepsize/ 5 reps + 3 turn 210 degrees len + 2 Changes made: set max_stepsize to 10 set  len  to 10 repeat: 30 max_stepsize/ 30 reps + 3 turn 60 degrees len  + 4

Here's something I have to admit: I was too afraid to break down the "769" code that was in my previous blog post. When I opened the file, I told myself that there was no way I would ever be able to understand such a sophisticated code. When I look back at the "769" code, I understand it so much clearer than I did before. Breaking it down helped me realize the purpose of each block and the contribution it has to create the design. It also helped me realize that I only believed it was hard because I didn't understand what a few blocks meant prior to adding comments. I made the same TurtleStitch design, but I called it "769 Commented" because I wanted to have comments next to each unique block so I can always look back at it in the future as a reference. I encourage you all to edit comments if you know more about the blocks. If anyone could figure out and explain the  reps  block, it would truly make a difference to my understanding of this code...