Big Picture

As I mentioned last week, I spent this week working on learning my first maze-creating algorithm. As a guide, I used this blog. I have gone through the entirety of the blog only once, but I plan on spending this week implementing the code on the blog and understanding the intricacies of the process.

Currently, one of my biggest challenges is that Haskell (the language I am focusing on through this project) does not have as much learning material or as many forums as other more common languages like Java. Without the vast resources I would have available in using an object oriented programming language (OOP is far more common than functional programming), I am finding it difficult to understand some concepts that Mr. Jelvis refers to on the blog. However, I will continue researching the topics I don't understand because I have found that after a bit of digging, the concepts are simple to understand.

After reading the book, I am able to understand the majority of the code just from reading it, but there are some advanced topics, such as "Monads", which I will be spending a day or two learning about. These mazes have taught me not only about algorithms, but also about basic graph theory in computer science, which is a fundamental concept that is generally considered difficult to implement in functional programming, but has been misrepresented by those who assert that.

All in all, it's been a productive week, and I am making progress according to plan. I might want to extend my endeavor in creating mazes to learn more about the algorithms and different types of mazes I can create. If you have any suggestions or questions about the path my project is taking, my blog, or the specifics of something within my project, feel free to leave a comment below.