CS 371P Spring 2021: Week 6

What did you do this past week?

This past week, I finished up the logistics of the Voting project and submitted it as well as learned different things from class lectures.

What’s in your way?

Right now, nothing is in my way.

What will you do next week?

Next week, I will attend lectures for this class and maybe get started on Project 3.

If you read it, what did you think of the Open-Closed Principle?

I think the open-closed principle is really interesting and very useful. I agree with a lot of the points that are made in the paper and I think it is a really great way to design code. In my past internship, I was told to add a new functionality by modifying pre-existing code, which led to errors in other methods that were dependent on the code I was trying to modify. Eventually, I had to change all of them to get the program to work. If my colleagues and I had followed the open-closed principle, then I would not have run into this issue.

What was your experience of arrays, iterators, and algorithms? (this question will vary, week to week)

My experience with arrays, iterators, and algorithms was great! I was able to understand what is going on under the hood for arrays and iterators from the explanations in class and I was able to understand and create the algorithms for the functionalities we learned in class as well.

What made you happy this week?

My dad surprised me by coming to visit me in Austin yesterday and that made me happy because I had been missing him!

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

My tip of the week is to test every method as soon as you are done writing it. Write tests for it before you begin writing it, modify those tests, if needed, along the way, and then test that method before moving on to the next one. For Project 2, my partner and I used this exact strategy and we found some bugs a lot easier than we might have if we had waiting until the end to test everything. It can be tempting to push off testing until later once you are in the zone for coding but trust me, this can save a lot of pain in the future.