Junior DDM:

For my program I made a crossword puzzle in Java. I did struggle a lot with my program but with some problem solving and some help I was able to get most of it done. I had to use IntelliJ and GitHub to create my program. I had to use a great amount of my math skills during this project because of finding indexes and iterating through arrays.

At the start of the DDM I honestly felt like I was a 1 on the self assessment score because of how confused and how I didn’t know where to start on the project. But as I continued and got help from my peers I feel now like I'm at a high 2 or a 3 now. Some skills I used was my knowledge of how to use ArrayLists, using 2D arrays, checking user input for validity, using iteration and loops. I also had to use the skills of file handling I learned how to recently.

I struggled greatly during this program but with help I got it done. I struggled with the removing answer method a lot. My main problem was with how when you remove an answer from the crossword it might delete parts of other answers. My fix for this was that I made a helper method that checked for letters in the opposite direction of the orientation of the removed answer and if it returned true the deleter would just skip it. My thoughts on this project is that we  should have gotten similar small amounts of instruction assignments more often to help build our critical thinking skills more so we were able to figure out what to do faster. This was mainly my biggest weakness during this project and I feel like if this was the case more often I would have not had so much trouble with the assignment.