New Semester, New Class, Welcome to the GIS Programming Blog Series - Module 1

 Hello fellow GIS enthusiasts!

Welcome to this semester's edition of the GIS blog series. I am back at it here at UWF continuing my education by taking this GIS Programming class. Python has always been something I've wanted to tackle to further my career, but I haven't had a real opportunity until this class. So I am looking forward to what this class has to offer. 

In this week's module, we learned how to run a script using IDLE, which stands for "Integrated Development and Learning Environment. IDLE is a built-in development environment used for writing, running, and debugging code written in Python. The next learning outcome we were expected to learn was interacting with Python (Jupyter) ArcGIS Notebooks. This is ArcGIS Pro's integrated Python application, and it is a more modern and innovative way of coding. The last outcome we were expected to learn about is how to think algorithmically with flowcharts. This involved us creating a flow chart design depicting the solving of this formula: degrees = radians*180/pi. To make the flow chart, we needed to understand what symbols to use to depict the processes to solve the formula. So the first symbol I used is an ellipse-like shape, and it is called the terminal symbol. This symbol indicates the beginning or end of a flowchart. The next couple of symbols I used was a rectangle symbol, this symbol depicts a step in a process. After I identified the process, the next symbol I used was a parallelogram. This symbol is the input/output symbol that indicates the process of inputting or outputting external data. To end the flowchart, I used another ellipse symbol. Here is how it turned out:

You may notice that the formula looks a little bit different compared to the formula I mentioned above. This is because I wanted to integrate into this flow chart as if someone would actually be coding this in Python. The reason I did this is because I wanted to try out the formula on IDLE and was having errors with pi not being a defined value. Knowing how pi is a long list of infinite numbers, I wanted to ensure it would be an accurate calculation. So I researched how to import math functions into Python, which can be done by doing import math, and then integrated it into my flow chart process. Then when it came to writing out what degrees equal, instead of just pi, I typed out math.pi to ensure that it would be calculated accurately. That is how I got to the depiction of my flowchart that you see above.

The last thing we needed to explore was a poem called "The Zen of Python", and in case you have not read it before, you can access it via you're IDLE program by typing import this or you can be uncool and find it here at this link: The Zen of Python

I see this poem as a beautiful piece on the art of coding with Python, specifically coding correctly. It talks about how one method is better than the other, confirming my belief in coding correctly. It also seems to talk about the ethics of coding, specifically making sure to follow the rules of coding and paying attention to detail to ensure errors aren’t missed. I also believe it encourages the future development of coding and emphasizes not to rush a final product. I think this poem is definitely a piece I can look at to model how to be successful in this class, and successful in utilizing Python in my career.

That is all for this week, thanks for reading!