DMP-2025 Week 10 update by Justin Charles (#417)

Signed-off-by: justin212407 <[email protected]>

Author: justin212407

src/constants/MarkdownFiles/posts/2025-08-10-dmp-25-justin212407-week10.md

@@ -0,0 +1,104 @@
+---
+title: "DMP’25 Week 10 Update by Justin Charles"
+excerpt: "Finalized brick connection infrastructure in the workspace and began defining AST parsing constraints for mapping between Masonry and program representation"
+category: "DEVELOPER NEWS"
+date: "2025-08-10"
+slug: "2025-08-10-dmp-25-justin212407-week10"
+author: "@/constants/MarkdownFiles/authors/justin-charles.md"
+tags: "dmp25,sugarlabs,week10,justin212407"
+image: "assets/Images/c4gt_DMP.webp"
+---
+
+<!-- markdownlint-disable -->
+
+# Week 10 Progress Report by Justin Charles
+
+**Project:** Music Blocks 4 Masonry  
+**Mentors:** [Anindya Kundu](https://github.com/meganindya/), [Sumit Srivastava](https://github.com/sum2it)  
+**Assisting Mentors:** [Devin Ulibari](https://github.com/pikurasa/), [Walter Bender](https://github.com/walterbender)  
+**Reporting Period:** 2025-08-04 - 2025-08-10   
+
+---
+
+## Goals for This Week
+
+- Complete the **brick connection infrastructure** in the workspace  
+- Define **AST parsing constraints** for converting between Masonry representation and program AST  
+
+---
+
+## This Week’s Highlights
+
+### 1. **Brick Connection Infrastructure Completed**
+
+- **Workspace Presentation**  
+  - Computed absolute coordinates of all incoming connection points (expression-right, statement-bottom, compound-inner-top) whenever a tower is added.  
+  - Reverse map utility converts notch IDs into `{BrickId, TowerId}` references.  
+  - Optimized for performance by recomputing only towers/bricks that change.  
+
+- **Collision Maps**  
+  - Created two separate maps:  
+    - **Expression Map** → stores expression-brick notch coordinates  
+    - **Statement Map** → stores statement-brick notch coordinates  
+  - Each map indexes by unique **Notch ID**, reverse-mapped to brick and tower ownership.  
+
+- **Collision Detection**  
+  - On drag-start, remove dragged brick/tower notch coords to prevent self-matching.  
+  - On each mouse-move, check outgoing notches against map entries.  
+  - Overlapping notch pairs are logged as *potential connections* via reverse mapping.  
+  - Example: standalone brick connecting to a tower uses the parent brick model (via reverse map) to identify exact position.  
+
+---
+
+### 2. **AST Parsing Discussions**
+
+- Defined constraints for **AST ↔ Masonry conversions**:  
+  - Each **Brick ID** in Masonry must map directly to an **AST Node ID** for consistency.  
+  - Constants and rules established for parsing tree hierarchies from visual blocks to program representation.  
+  - Ensured that parsing is bidirectional: Masonry → AST for execution, AST → Masonry for reconstruction.  
+
+- Clarified how the tree structure should be preserved while respecting parent-child and tower relationships.  
+
+---
+
+## Challenges & Solutions
+
+**Challenge:** Keeping connection maps efficient while supporting continuous drag.  
+**Solution:** Limited recomputation scope to only changed towers/bricks, combined with quadtree partitioning.  
+
+**Challenge:** Ensuring AST parsing rules remain flexible yet consistent with brick model.  
+**Solution:** Established a shared ID system and constants for mapping, ensuring robust future conversions.  
+
+---
+
+## Key Learnings
+
+- **Collision Map Architecture**  
+  Gained hands-on experience designing performant quadtree-based collision maps.  
+
+- **Reverse Mapping Importance**  
+  Saw how a utility mapping notch IDs to `{BrickId, TowerId}` streamlines both collisions and merges.  
+
+- **AST Consistency**  
+  Understood the importance of keeping **brick IDs == AST IDs** to prevent desync during parsing.  
+
+---
+
+## Next Week’s Roadmap
+
+- Complete brick connections with on merge effects.
+- Parse the AST from masonry to program according to the constraints defined in the previous meetings.
+
+---
+
+## Resources & References
+
+- [musicblocks-v4 Branch (with the work)](https://github.com/sugarlabs/musicblocks-v4/tree/gsoc-dmp-2025/week-9/justin)  
+- [musicblocks-v4 Repository](https://github.com/sugarlabs/musicblocks-v4)  
+- [Quadtree Algorithm Notes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadtree)  
+
+---
+
+## Acknowledgments
+
+Thanks to my mentors for guiding me through both the technical and architectural aspects of connection logic and AST design.