CS 371p: 20 Apr — 26 Apr
Finding the meaning of (Project #5) Life
- What did you do this past week? I attended lecture and began the project as early as possible. I have decided to work alone on this last project, and I wanted to make sure I addressed any obstacles I might encounter as early as possible since I won’t have a partner to bounce my ideas off of.
- What’s in your way? So far there has not been anything too difficult about the project. I feel like I understand the approach to the problem thanks to having encountered a similar task in Darwin. I don’t fully understand how to go about implementing the Cell handler class, but I believe we’ll be going over topics in lecture that should help, and I plan on trying to pass the tests for Conway and Fredkin cells in the meantime.
- What will you do next week? Next week I will hopefully use what I learn in lecture to finish out my implementation of the Cell class in addition to finishing the project, as I’d like to have it done before the last week of classes which looks to be an extremely test-heavy week for me.
- What was your experience of allocator? (this question will vary, week to week) While working on the allocator project, I don’t think I fully understood the practical application of what we were working on. I figured it was some obscure way of doing custom heap allocation, so I didn’t think much of it at the time. What we learned in lecture showed me otherwise; allocators can be a powerful tool for making algorithms more efficient while also simplifying code. From what I’ve seen so far, tools like allocators are what make C++ so powerful compared to languages like Java and Python. The ability to manipulate and allocate specific locations in memory allows the programmer to deal with a deeper layer of complexity for the reward of more effective code.
- What made you happy this week? My birthday was this week and, despite being at home and unable to see any of my friends in person, it really lifted my spirits. I went on a bike ride, lounged in the pool, and enjoyed a wonderful chocolate cake my mother made. While it was not the event it might have been if I was at school, it was relaxing and my family made me feel loved :)
- What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week? My tip of the week is to go to office hours. I personally can get very stubborn in the face of a bug or other programming difficulty, and I sometimes waste hours overthinking things when simply asking the course staff for a hint can immediately nudge me in the right direction.
