It is quite an amazing way to get the very first understanding and interests in programming!
We are asked to work in pairs, think about a mental picture model and write instructions with descriptive language such as “draw a line/circle/triangle/… on/under/beside/…”, “repeat/resemble…”, “the coordinate is (x, y)…” After finishing the instructions, we exchange our instructions and try to draw other people’s mental model with the help of instructions.
My partner and I want to write a instruction of drawing a cat, but it is really hard to describe, so we turns our idea into a pig. “1:draw a big circle. 2:draw a small triangle on the left top of the circle and another small triangle on the right top of the circle. 3: draw four very little circles in the center of the big circle, which looks like a button. 4:draw a ellipse inside in big circle and include the lower two very small circle ” We hand the instructions to others. The funny part is coming! Due to some descriptions in the instructions can be interpreted in different ways, and everyone has a hamlet, the drawings appear to be more than abstract :D!!!
My partners and I got an instruction and we finally got two elliptical clocks. Some of the classmates who already had some programming experiences gave out more accurate instructions.
I get some idea about programming that if I want the machine to understand what I am thinking about, I should use the very logical and accurate descriptive orders, or the orders can be interpreted in different ways. It is the accuracy makes programing very interesting and the accurate instructions could help us the effects we want. However, I think the implicit instructions sometimes may comes to a surprise effect beyond our expectation!