What did you do this past week?
In the past week I worked on our first project for this class, Collatz, attended summer lectures for this class and M340L Linear Algebra, and exercised in my free time.
What’s in your way?
I’m interpreting this question to mean what obstacles am I currently facing. As of now, I feel that the “summer break mentality” is the main obstacle in my way. This is the first summer during which I’ve taken intensive classes, so I’ve been slowly adjusting to treat right now just like any normal school semester in terms of productivity and time management.
What will you do next week?
Whether or not we are assigned a project next week, I will devote some time to become more comfortable with the C++ language and our project workflow, as I felt that Collatz was really a great learning experience. Additionally, I need to study for a midterm in Linear Algebra. Outside of school, I’m going to play basketball and work out to stay in shape.
What did you think of the Paper #2: makefile?
I thought reading through the makefile for the Collatz project was a very informative and important assignment, as the only prior experience I had with makefiles was in CS429 for the 3 large programming assignments. I was never required to read them and I was too occupied with completing the assignments to ever read them. However, after reading the makefile for Collatz and receiving answers to my questions, I feel like my comprehension regarding makefiles has improved a lot.
What was your experience of assertions, unit tests, coverage, and IsPrime?
I had previously encountered assertions in CS429, as I used them for debugging in my programming assignments, so going over it again was a useful reminder of the utility of assertions. The Google Test framework for unit tests will definitely be a tool I use in the future, as it makes testing code so simple and straightforward, and I honestly can’t believe I hadn’t used it myself until now. Ensuring high test coverage using “gcov” will also remain in my toolkit, as it confirms the cases I’m writing are actually testing most to all of my code. Personally, I enjoyed working on the “IsPrime” exercise because my breakout room was pretty social, so I got to know some of my UT CS peers better after we completed our solution.
What made you happy this week?
I am happy that I was able to complete the Collatz project at a reasonable pace while still being able to spend time with my family, exercise, and watch some great NBA playoff games this week.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My pick of the week is leetcode.com, a competitive programming platform like Hackerrank that is used for interview preparation and coding contests. I use the website more often during summer break to keep my problem solving sharp. Although the site is probably very well known among CS students for the questions, I also use their “Explore” section to brush up on material I learned previously at UT or learn new concepts.
