CS371P Fall 2019: Week 10

What did you do this past week?
This past week, I started working on Darwin with my partner on Monday (with a 6 hour session). We managed to knock out most of the project on Monday and passed HackerRank Test 0, but timed out on all of the other tests. We discussed the idea of using creature pointers in our board, but decided to creatures because we thought it was easier and that copying wasn’t a huge cost. However, after Professor Downing explained the use of creature pointers in class on Wednesday, we knew that was the way to go. After 30 minutes of adapting our code, we were able to pass all the HackerRank tests. Other than that, I finished up my Compilers project, started the next project for Compilers, and registered for classes (which didn’t go as smoothly as I wanted, but hey, it’s UT CS registration). As of writing this post, I got back from HackTX, where I worked with some friends on converting JavaScript code to executable haiku JavaScript code. Even though I couldn’t contribute as much as I would have liked, my teammates had lots of experience with hackathons and front end development, so we were able to get a finished product done relatively quickly and I feel like I learned a lot.
What’s in your way?
Once again, I prioritized some things over others this week (mainly Darwin and registration). This leaves me with work in other classes that I’m behind in and need to catch up. Hopefully, I’ll be able to catch up and figure out how to more effectively balance my work so that I’m not in this situation constantly.
What will you do next week?
Next week, I’m going to meet with my partner, make some small changes to our design for Darwin, and finish the workflow for the project. After that, I need to start and finish an essay revision that is due on Wednesday. I also want to make some good progress on the next Compilers project, which is more difficult than any of the previous.
What was your experience of the vector implementation? (this question will vary, week to week)
Learning about how vector is implemented is interesting because it makes us consider the different challenges that come with it and the changes that we can make for efficiency. However, I found the lectures this week to be a little rushed and hard to follow, so I’m going to go over the HackerRank exercises to try and get a better understanding of what’s going on.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My tip-of-the-week is going to hackathons (like HackTX). Even though I don’t have much experience at these, I learned a lot about setting up and deploying web apps, and web scraping. I also learned a little about what goes in to front end development. Overall, it was a fun experience and our finished product was pretty cool. Also, there’s free food (meals and snacks), free swag, and lots of companies there.
