Blog #9: CS 373 Fall 2019
What did you do this past week?
I met two times with my IDB project group to get started on our website-wide search functionality. We established assignments and roles on Monday, and began working on Wednesday. I feel like this will be easier than the previous phase, since most of this functionality will be achieved through changes to the frontend, but I can’t really say for sure. There are lots of incremental improvements that we have to make, like updating the model page to be cleaner and relationship items, but I think we can get there in time.
What’s in your way?
We need to work on rehauling the front end and also completing all the user stories. Also, it seems like we could be failing a few tests that we wrote for the previous phase, and therefore the pipeline, so we need to make tweaks on that end. All in all, there needs to be a lot more work to be done, but it remains to be seen.
What will you do next week?
We will finalize our changes, and fix bugs. Aaron said he would be personally working on the search functionality, so I’m confident that we will be getting somewhere in the coming days. Next week I’ll brush up on SQL and make sure I understand it for the coming exam. I’m quite unfamiliar with the language, so I definitely need to take care with this upcoming exam.
What was your experience of SQL? (this question will vary, week to week)
To be honest, database languages are completely foreign to me, so I have no previous experience with SQL. Downing has been teaching this for a couple of classes now, and I think I have a foothold understanding of it. I think it’s a great way of querying databases and getting the relevant information that you want quickly and efficiently.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
Try different languages to code in. I realize now that I shouldn’t limit myself to a few “core” languages that I’m familiar with and branch out, so that I can be adaptable and not be stagnant in terms of skillset.

