CS343: Blog 11
- What did you do this past week?
Surprisingly, I did a lot of school work this past week!
I had a big NLP assignment due this past Saturday, and I had to get it done to make sure I passed the class (I chose not to do the previous assignment.. senior year is rough).
Even though I’m not the biggest fan of NLP and data science things in general, I actually had a good time doing the assignment - I learned a lot about Pytorch and RNNs.
I also started learning a lot about front end development! Frontend development and UI design (my CSS skills are atrociously bad) were the main skills I wanted to learn when taking this course. Being able to really learn the basics and apply it on a website is super fun.
2. What’s in your way?
School.
Seriously.
I’ve come to realize that school is a massive drag. I want to program for fun and learn about things that I’m interested in (frontend dev, CSS, making my own websites, trying to start my own company). Homework is lame.
In addition, these last two months of school are the only things standing in the way of me and world traveling!
I’m so excited to travel the world with my friends. Right now, it’s looking like we’re going to hit Southeast Europe and the Middle East (the original plan was Western Europe to Southeast Europe, but COVID).
After that, I’ll be solo traveling for two months, slowly making my way from the Middle East to Nepal. Once I get to Nepal, I’m going to hike to Mount Everest!
Doesn’t that sound way more fun than school?
3. What will you do next week?
I’ll be working out and working on my SWE website! I’m planning on getting some serious front end dev work done — I want to keep honing my skills.
Other than that, it’s not too busy of a week. Pretty awesome.
4. If you read it, what did you think of the Why getter and setter methods are evil?
I thought it was interesting — I’ve always seen (and implemented) getters/setters when working in a Java code base. But I’ve never thought really thought better ways around it!
He makes a good point that getters/setters that only serve to access private instance variables is pretty much equivalent to just leaving those variables public. AKA: not good.
I also liked the introduction, where he emphasized that a very important part of any design process is to look at the options/possibilities, and think about the benefits/drawbacks of each.
I think doing this methodically when designing new modules and systems will be hugely valuable for me as a programmer. It’s not exactly a “programming skill” or a “software design pattern”, but it’s a very important problem solving mental model that I want to use.
5. What was your experience of select, project, cross join and theta join? (this question will vary, week to week)
I’m going to be honest, I skipped most of the classes this week.
I wasn’t super interested in learning about those topics and the relational algebra underpinnings of SQL.
That’s what the libraries are for!
6. What made you happy this week?
I went to the Greenbelt in Austin for the first time this past Saturday! And holy cow, it was epic.
A friend that grew up in Austin showed us his favorite Greenbelt spot — the Lost Creek/Hill of Life area. It was AWESOME.
This place was such a cool vibe — waterfall, watering holes, swimming, dogs everywhere, it had everything! It even had a sweet rope swing that I jumped off of a couple of times (didn’t learn how to do a back flip, but we’re working on it).
Highly recommend this spot to anyone, especially since the weather is so nice these days.
7. What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
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