- What are you most proud of doing last week?
I finally finished my physics exam! I’ve been preparing for this exam for over a week so I’m glad it’s finally out of the way. It went much better than expected, so I’m happy.
- What ability or skill did you use to make that moment the most proud of?
Math skills? The exam was heavily calculus-physics based but it required a good conceptual understanding of the topics. Thankfully I’ve taken a version of this class before so I’m not working with anything completely new. The questions are definitely much harder than the type you’d get on a high-school level physics course but the core of the subject is still the same, so that seemed to work to my advantage.
- What impact did what you do have on other people?
This is more of a personal achievement so there’s no direct impact on other people, but I hope everyone did well on the exam as well.
- What did you think of Paper #4. Pair Programming.
I never really understood the point of pair programming, but I think that’s because most of my Computer Science learning experience has been individual. There’s so much emphasis on not looking/copying other people’s code in the initial stages of learning and in intro classes that it’s easy to forget that most work in software engineering is done in groups. This type of mindset going into CS can cause a form of ego and possessiveness over one’s code which is really not conducive to a work environment. The first pair-programming class I did was Operating Systems, and that really taught be that there’s a lot of merit to coding with other people. For one, I learned that it’s really important to slow down and actually design your code and algorithm before you start typing. This way it’s easier to track your errors and mistakes, and you have someone right beside you pointing them out as well.
- What did you think of Project #1. Grades.
The project was fun! And now I have a grade calculator that I can use to calculate my current grade in the class. Overall, I think this is the most I’ve ever learned about using Git, and utilizing tools like gcov and valgrind. The project made me realize the important of thoroughly testing code — it’s really easy to miss testing a certain functionality and it breaks your code at some later point. Unit tests are important!
- What did you think of exceptions,
strcmp(),vector,listanddeque? (This question will vary, week to week.)
This is the first time I’m learning about deque! I’ve never used it before but it seems like a really useful data structure. Learning the reserve() function for vectors was really important for me. I’ve used it in my code before but I never understood the functionality and I always thought it’s the same as declaring a certain size array.
- What made you happy this week?
The weather is (hopefully) starting to cool down! It’s officially autumn but it’s a bit funny that we have to be happy about 80-degree weather. I’m so ready for sweater weather.
- What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
I’ve started learning how to integrate 2-D art into a 3-D game environment when I’m building an isometric game, and I’m starting to learn that there’s really a lot of math that goes behind graphics and games in general. If anyone’s interested, check this out.
