CS 373 Spring 2021 – Final Entry: Brinda Prasad

Long-term takeaways from SWE:

• test first, test during, test after; test, test, test
• when designing algorithms, demand the weakest capabilities (e.g. iterable vs. indexable)
• when designing containers, provide the strongest capabilities (e.g. indexable vs iterable)
• build decorators on top of containers, iterators, and functions
• utilize the benefits of being lazy (i.e. yield)
• always look for reuse and symmetry in your code
• collaboration is essential to the quality of your code and to your well-being in producing it
• refactor, refactor, refactor
• make your code beautiful

How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?

The course and Professor Downing conveyed the above takeaways effectively through the team project, lectures, and in-class exercises. In addition, I think my team played a huge role in reinforcing some of these takeaways through our discussions and coding sessions.

Were there any other particular takeaways for you?

Another huge takeaway for me was the importance of testing, especially when working with so many different components of a web application. I didn’t have a good practice of testing code prior to this class, but the different testing processes we used helped me realize how effective testing frameworks can be to make sure each part of the werbsite is working as intended.

How did you feel about cold calling?

I ended up really appreciating the cold calling during lectures! I was really nervous about it going into the semester, especially because I feel like it takes me a bit longer to grasp certain concepts, but the informal, conversational format of Professor Downing’s lectures made cold calling function as more of a learning moment rather than a test of our knowledge.

I also felt that the frequency each person got called on in class was just right. It was a great way of motivating people to pay attention to the content without feeling overwhelmed by the possibility of being cold-called.

How did you feel about office hours?

Office hours were a great resource! Most of the times happened to be during my other classes, so I went to more lab sessions for help than office hours. However, the TAs and Professor Downing have been extremely helpful when I have attended office hours.

How did you feel about lab sessions?

The way lab sessions were structured within the week was really convenient for me personally. I preferred lab sessions over office hours because of the timing, but I also found that it was helpful to have two hours blocked off where we could go and ask questions. It was particularly nice for certain bugs to be able to ask questions, try a few changes, and come back to follow up with a TA.

What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

I didn’t work directly with Postman, but as a group, we found Postman to be extremely useful for API calls and documentation.

What’s the most useful Web dev tool that your group used that was not required?

Bootstrap! Our frontend work for the first phase was definitely sped up since we could use elements from the React Bootstrap library.

How did you feel about your group having to self-teach many, many technologies?

Having to self-learn and self-teach was pretty overwhelming at first, but as we got comfortable with the project, tools, and our team, it became one of the best aspects of our team dynamic.

Give me your suggestions for improving the course.

It was a wonderful course and I really enjoyed Professor Downing’s lectures! A minor suggestion would be to increase the time limit on quizzes, especially in a virtual format, to accommodate for different internet, device, or other factors that might make it hard to join the Zoom call, open up the Canvas quiz, and enter the code before using the rest of the four minutes to answer the quiz questions.