CS 371p Spring 2024: Kevin Wang
What did you do this past week?
I went to the UTPC contest on Friday. I think the contests help strengthen my problem-solving skills, and the free food there is pretty top-tier.
What’s in your way?
Not much is in my way right now. All my remaining exams are after spring break, so all I have to worry about this week is getting Allocator submitted.
What will you do next week?
I will wrap up the Allocator project and submit it. Also, I have some homework for my Algorithms class to finish. Besides that, I don’t have much on my plate for next week, so maybe I’ll be proactive and study a bit for my next midterms.
What did you think of Paper #7. The Liskov Substitution Principle?
I think that the Liskov Substitution Principle makes a lot of practical sense, since programmers generally want robust functions that can handle a variety of parameters, such as base objects and derived objects. A point that stood out to me was how object behavior determines the ISA relationship, not the objects themselves. As elaborated by the paper, a square mathematically is a rectangle. However, when converting these shapes to objects with private data and methods, their behaviors may not follow the ISA relationship.
What did you think of Digits, operator overloading, and std::array?
I would say that I was a bit unprepared for the first attempt at Digits. I had a good idea about the general approach, but I was confused about certain syntax. I’m glad that Professor Downing gave us another attempt, since I was able to get my syntax issues sorted out over the weekend.
I remember when Professor Downing introduced the concept of operator overloading about a month ago. At that time, I wondered what the benefit of such a practice was, since operator overloading rules are quite strict. Through this week’s lectures, I now see how important operator overloading is for object design.
For arrays, I am now aware of the limited features of built-in arrays, and I will take advantage of standard array objects if I need their additional functionality.
What made you happy this week?
There was a grading error on one of my exams, so I was able to get some points back.
Pick-of-the-Week
I’ve been using my TI-84 a lot for my Finance class. For many TI graphing calculators, you can store functions/formulas on them, which may be helpful for some upper-level math/CS courses.