CS371g Summer 2021: Kevin Wu Week #3

What did you do this past week?

This past week was pretty busy for me, as I had the Netflix project for this class and a midterm in my linear algebra class. During the more limited free time that I did have this week, I helped my dad build a pergola in my backyard.

What’s in your way?

Currently, the Netflix project is very much in my way. I’ve already spent a good amount of time this weekend working on it and I anticipate that trend will continue into next week. Although it is a lot of work, I definitely feel like my work on the project so far has been very beneficial to my learning of C++.

What will you do next week?

Hopefully, if I finish the Netflix project early, I’ll be able to play basketball or work out more next week. I’ll still be attending my summer classes and continuing to practice my C++, so my overall routine is still pretty much the same as this week.

If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #3: Pair Programming?

I thought this paper was a great read, as it was very convincing in its support of pair programming and definitely made me realize some of the benefits I’m missing out on by not engaging in pair programming. Despite the remote nature of this class, which would normally completely dissuade me from pair programming like it did in the past two semesters, I think this reading made me seriously consider trying pair programming in this class.

What was your experience of value vs. pointer vs. reference, and Incr?

Since my programming class last semester was CS429, I had recent experience going over value vs. pointer vs. reference, but it was good to review the concept. However, I had never realized how this concept was related to pre- and post-increment, so the Incr exercise really connected those dots for me.

What was your experience of Boost Serialization and RMSE?

Before this class, I have never encountered Boost Serialization or RMSE. However, going over both concepts during lecture was very helpful and I think after the lectures my understanding of them is pretty solid.

What made you happy this week?

Something that made me happy this week was updating all of my Spotify playlists that I listen to. I have two playlists that I listen to during coding sessions, one that is entirely Kanye West songs and another that is more chill music, and I finally got around to updating them this week. Perusing Spotify for new songs to add was fun, and then after I updated these playlists, my coding sessions felt more fresh and less repetitive with new music in the background.

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

My pick of the week is geeksforgeeks.org. Being relatively new to C++, I often find myself looking up syntax and libraries for the language when working with it, and this website has pretty good resources for important components of C++ such as the STL. The reason I’m not just simply recommending cplusplus.com is because I feel like this website is easier to read and follow for me, but I use both and I think both are useful.