CS371P Fall 2019 — Week 10: Ryan Resma

What did you do this past week?
This past week was a busy one, because I have three midterms in the upcoming week, so I spent all week studying for them, even Halloween night, which was kind of a bummer. However, I feel much more prepared for each of my midterms, so it’s a win in the end I guess. Lastly, I was able to work out a fairly straightforward design for Darwin, and I am currently in the process of making unit tests, acceptance tests, and a framework on Gitlab.
What’s in your way?
Right now I have three midterms in my way, but I feel pretty good about all three of them since I’ve been preparing for more than a week now. Honestly this has been the first time that I’ve been smart about my studying, spacing it out over time rather than cram it all in a couple of days. After Tuesday, however, the only thing in between me and Thanksgiving Break will be Darwin, which I am actually enjoying, so it shouldn’t be too hard to complete it by Thursday night.
What will you do next week?
This next Monday and Tuesday I will be studying for and hopefully acing all three of my exams, which are for non-CS classes, so I’m not super worried. I’ve been much better about appreciating non-CS classes this semester, in fact spending more time studying for them. Lastly, I plan to work all day Wednesday and Thursday to completing Darwin, hopefully finishing my framework and initially failing unit tests by tomorrow.
What was your experience of the vector implementation? (this question will vary, week to week)
My experience of implementing a simple vector class was good, and I feel as if I am much more comfortable with the inner workings now. Even though I was able to follow along with the Hackerrank exercises, I feel as though there was much more to it than passing the test cases. For example, on Friday we got the test cases to pass but Dr. Downing showed us a better way to do things (like reusing code or edge case checking).
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
In honor of registration week, my pick-of-the-week is the UT Course Registration Plus Google Chrome extension, which incorporates UT Catalyst (a web application that displays various grade distributions for all the classes at UT) as well as past syllabus’s and the professor’s website. All you have to do is download the extension on chrome, and you will be able to see a clickable button at the end of the class’s column that will trigger a popup with a nice compilation of all the information above. It’s been a lifesaver for me, especially at the last minute when a class fills up and I need to check other classes’ information on a time crunch while registering.
