CS 373 Spring 2021: Brinda Prasad

What did you do this past week?

This past week, I’ve been working on Collatz for this class as well as OOP. Once I set up my issue tracker, I began to schedule time each day to work on certain issues within the suggested workflow. I also went to one of the help sessions to ask a few questions, which definitely helped clarify some details!

What’s in your way?

Nothing’s really in my way this week! I’m really glad I found a balance between working through assignments and spending time relaxing.

What will you do next week?

I’ll be wrapping up the Collatz project and trying to get through the rest of my to-do list so that I can have next weekend relatively free! I’m feeling good about Collatz and will hopefully just have to wrap up a few things early this week before submitting.

If you read it, what did you think of the Continuous Integration?

I didn’t realize just how much the practice of continuous integration increases efficiency for projects with multiple phases or contributors until I read the paper on continuous integration. When I initially started the project, I just saw continuous integration as an extra step of confirmation, but after reading the paper, I have a newfound appreciation for the practice. It’s easy to see how it makes locating and fixing errors much quicker.

What was your experience of Collatz?

Collatz is an interesting mathematical problem, which makes it all the more fun to work on! The project itself isn’t bad, but I’m making sure to follow the workflow properly to practice working on projects more methodically.

What was your experience of exceptions?

To be honest, I haven’t used exceptions as much as I should. Learning about exceptions again in the context of this class, however, was a great refresher.

What made you happy this week?

I finally went on a morning run for the first time since the pandemic started. I usually only do bodyweight workouts in my apartment, so it was refreshing to wake up early and get some fresh air.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick of the week is The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, which is a great read to learn about design thinking principles in general. I haven’t finished reading the book but it’s made me realize some things about design that I took for granted.