CS 371p Spring 2024: Final Entry: Ye-un Christina Go

FINAL WEEK !!!

• How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?

I think the class was great at addressing the importance of tests, designs, and breaking conventional coding patterns. I learned the ups and downs of getters/setters and how to create a better alternative to make your code grow organically with continuous development. I learned to use containers and allocators instead of new/delete which is better memory management on the coder. Creating unit tests made it easy to test my code for edge cases.

• Were there any other particular takeaways for you?

This class made me consider the importance of constructors and their time efficiency a lot more than what I normally was knowledgeable about. Under the hood, when objects like vectors or arrays, user-defined objects, or primitive values are initialized and constructed, they have different efficiencies and it’s good to consider how they differ.

• What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

Learning how to use the Google testing library was really useful. It allowed me to learn how to create unit tests for my codes in a more conventional and structured way instead of using print statements. GCov also told me how much code coverage the tests were going through, which allowed me to gauge that I was writing code consistently.

• In the end, how much did you learn relative to other UT CS classes?

The workload was 1/2 of data structures, 1/3 of computer architecture, and 1/4 of operating systems. It’s a good normal course with good content for learning more closely about object creation.

Topic Feedbacks

1. Specification grading: OOP uses the same grading as Dr. Norman’s OS. I had a lot of conferences/fellowships scheduled throughout the semester which meant I had to miss classes. While quizzes can be made up, exercises cannot!
2. Cold calling: I honestly enjoyed cold calling. It’s fine if you’re wrong. It kept me more engaged in the course.
3. Daily quizzes: It makes you accountable to come to class, but I’m not the most diligent person… Sometimes, the quizzes repeat themselves to give you a second chance.
4. General projects: You’re given a template for the first project, and you build your own projects from scratch as you progress. It felt like I was building the muscle to be more independent and learn the entire coding practice.
5. Blogs: I treated them like a diary. I always loved looking back on the week and thinking about what made me happy. It’s also fun to read/stalk your friends’ blogs!!