CS371p Spring 2019 Final Entry

What did you like the least about the class?

I really did not like the testing style for this class. I had never done competitive programming before and was not prepared for the first test. I was better prepared for the second one, but I did still not like it. I use Google a lot while programming, and not being able to is really awful.

What did you like the most about the class?

Most of the projects were very interesting. Most of them were had interesting premises and were engaging while not being too difficult, and if there were parts I got hung up on, I often went to the TAs' office hours and Lab hours.

What's the most significant thing you learned?

Just learning more of the intricacies of programming and C++.

How many hours a week did you spend coding/debugging/testing for this class?

It varied a lot between projects, but on the high end it was only about ten hours. Most of that time in the latter projects was spent trying to fix problems in the implementation of my code and trying to get it just fast enough to pass the Hackerrank tests.

How many hours a week did you spend reading/studying for this class?

In regards to the reading assignments, I did them all in the beginning of the semester, but as the class went on, he started actually quizzing on that material less and less often, so I spent less time reading. With regards to studying, I did poorly on the first test because I did not know how to study for the kind of tests in this class, but I did for the second test, so for the week up to the last test I spend about 10 hours studying.

How many lines of code do you think you wrote?

Throughout all the projects, and not counting all the code writing I did while practicing for the tests, I think I wrote a couple thousand.

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

Valgrind was very useful in finding memory leaks and errors in one of the projects.

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

I don't think we used a tool that wasn't required.

If you could change one thing about the course, what would it be?

Don't schedule a project to be due the week after spring break when it is assigned right before spring break starts.

CS371p Week 14

What did you do this past week?

This past week was mostly spent finishing up the final projects in most of my classes. I finished the programming projects in both of my CS classes that had them and mostly finished my Chinese final project presentation. I also seriously started going over the Hackerrank exercises again and again until I can do them without looking for help. I've gotten decent at it so far, but I still have a little ways to go before I will feel prepared for the test.

What's in your way?

Currently in my way is worrying about the test for this class. I did not do well for the last one and am very worried about how well I will do now. Granted, now that I know how the tests work and can study for them properly, it shouldn't be too much of an issue, but nevertheless, I am worried.

What will you do next week?

Since next week is the last week of classes, I have a whole slew of things that need to be done before I can start studying for finals. I will keep practicing the Hackerrank exercises, even the old ones, and as time permits I will review the quizzes and notes so I don't miss a single thing. I will also finish preparing for the final presentation for Chinese, but since it is a video, once our group finishes recording, we will just have to watch it in class which will be torturous, but it needs to be done.

What was your experience in learning about pure virtual functions?

It was very helpful to see how abstract methods and classes work all laid out clearly. While starting the Life project, the abstract and virtual aspects of the project were confusing, to say the least, and although I had mostly finished the project by the time we talked about the topic in class, I still didn't understand it very well until we went over it in class.

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

Although most of this class probably already knows to do this, my tip of the week is still to do the Hackerrank exercises whenever you get the chance. Do them until you don't need outside help to complete them. Doing this will almost assure you don't get hung up on syntax or compile errors during the test, and will probably help you solve the actual problem as well.

CS371p Week 13

What did you do this past week?

This past week I spent most of my time studying for the two Chinese tests and a long quiz I had. It was very hectic since it was a lot of material to cover and review for each assignment. The rest of the time I spent working on my two programming projects, running into issues, and getting them fixed eventually. I also spent some time going over this class's Hackerrank exercises to get a head start on studying for the test.

What's in your way?

Currently in my way is a lot of projects due this week. I have my two programming classes' projects due this week, as well as a video presentation for Chinese. So once again I will be very busy. This worries me because I would really like a lot of time to study for the test in this class, but the closer we get to the test day, the busier I get.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will study for yet another Chinese test as well as two more quizzes. I will complete my two programming projects, hopefully with as little frustration as possible. I am already close with one of them, but as usual, I am stuck on a weird bug. Other than these things, I will repeatedly go over the exercises from this class to get comfortable with writing all that is needed.

What was your experience in learning about inheritance?

While very confusing at first, the more I practiced it the more clear it became. And while I don't like making things more complicated than they need to be, I do see the necessity in the features inheritance offers. Though I am still encountering issues in this class's project related to inheritance, so I haven't completely grasped it yet.

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

Start practicing the exercises for this class as early as possible. I know most of my classmates probably already know this, but I still want to reiterate. I did poorly on the first exam and the main reason why was because I didn't go over the exercises as many times as I should have. My goal is to try and go over most of the exercises at least once per day up until the test. That way I can spend my time on the test actually solving the problem and not on fixing compile errors.

CS371p Week 12

What did you do this past week?

This past week was mainly spent finishing up the two programming projects that were due this week, and completing the final problem set for Algorithms. I also had an unusually high workload for Chinese last week since it is close to the end of the semester and all the hardest assignments and tests, and the final group project are coming up.

What's in your way?

Currently in my way are the last two projects for my programming classes, but neither seem especially difficult, so hopefully they shouldn't be in my way for much longer. I also have two tests for Chinese next week, so there are going to be a couple of long study sessions for those. The main thing I worry about and have worried about since shortly past the beginning of the semester is my Algorithms class. I have a hard time understanding the recent lectures in class, and I know the final will cover much more simplified versions of what we cover but I don't know by how much.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will continue working on the last two programming projects for the semester, and hopefully finish them before the end of the week so I can go watch Avengers: Endgame this Sunday with a clear head. I will also be studying for the two Chinese tests I mentioned previously as well as two quizzes for the same class. In my spare time, I will try to slowly better understand what we are discussing in Algorithms to prepare ahead of time for the final.

What was your experience of Project #4: Darwin?

This project was a little different than the programming projects I am used to, but it was much more satisfying when it worked because there was actual visual feedback I could understand that returned when it worked correctly. That doesn't mean my initial design had a couple major flaws which I had to eventually redesign when I found them after I had already coded them in, but it does mean that I enjoyed this project.

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

Just this week I learned about utcatalyst.org which can show previous semesters' grade distributions for classes. While in the end, it might not affect my final class selection, it is interesting to know that this semester I apparently chose all difficult classes according to the grade distributions.

CS371p Week 10

What did you do this past week?

This past week was a nice reprieve from the previous week. I didn't have to rush to finish two projects, and we only had attendance quizzes this week, which was nice. I started work on the current project and made a little bit of progress. I also had a Chinese test at the end of the week.

What's in your way?

I currently have two projects due in a little over a week, so I need to get both of them mostly finished this week. These projects concern me a little, but I think I can do both of them without the amount of trouble I encountered the last project. I am also having trouble understanding the recent Algorithms lectures, so I need to spend a lot more time studying the new content than I usually do.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will be doing some heavy coding trying to finish two projects as soon as possible. As I don't have a partner for one of them, a lot of that time will be spent coding alone, so there are sure to be a lot of things to debug. I will also finish another Algorithms problem set and start studying for the next Chinese test.

What did you think of the talk by Dr. Rich and Dr. Cline?

I thought the talk was very informative and interesting, if a little over the top. I understand and appreciate that we need to try to consider all consequences, intended or otherwise, of our choices, but applying this behavior to formulas seems a little overboard. Like they said in their talk, if we were to use this kind of process on every choice we make, we would never make any choices.

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

This week's tip is to take breaks when you can. The week after spring break was such a hectic week that I was glad I didn't have too much to do the following week so I could relax and cool down from the craziness. Whenever you are overwhelmed with schoolwork, as long as you can spare the time, you should take breaks whenever you can. Otherwise, you will eventually burn out and be even less productive.

CS371p Week 9

What did you do this past week?

Last week was so very hectic. It was the first week back from spring break and I had two projects I due Thursday, one of which my group had barely started, and another I had to wait until I got back from spring break to make any progress because I needed a lot of help from the TAs. I also had a test for Algorithms the day before those projects were due, and I didn't do too well on that. So overall a pretty bad week.

What's in your way?

Currently in my way is starting the two new projects for the classes whos' projects just ended. One project is just a continuation of what our group has already been doing, so it shouldn't be too hard to get started, but the other is a completely new kind of project. I haven't done anything like it before, so I am nervous to get started. 

What will you do next week?

Next week I will start on the new projects. I will go to TA office hours and Lab hours so I can get a good foundation on these projects and hopefully not have to wait until the last minute like I did with the last ones. I will also be preparing for a Chinese test at the end of the week that is supposed to be harder than the ones we have taken before, so I should definitely study for it.

What was your experience of Project #3: Allocator?

Next time this project is given, I think the provided files should be more prominently displayed. I had already finished Allocator before I saw that there was a provided .h file way down in the rubric, when the last time we were provided code, it was in some of the top links in the page. Due to this, I was in a mad rush when I got back from spring break to understand how the .h worked, and how to rewrite my program. Another issue is that while Allocator was not overly difficult in the end, trying to understand the .h file when the first full week it has been released is spring break is not conducive to asking questions.

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

My tip of the week is that even if you have a group project and some of the time to do it is over spring break, some of your group just won't be in contact during that time, so you can not reliably progress any significant amount during spring break. If at all possible you want to do as much of it as you can before spring break, and if the project is assigned right before the break starts, and due the week you get back, well, you better be good at whatever the project is about.

CS371p Week 8

What did you do this past week?

Last week I took a torrent of tests starting on Tuesday and ending on Thursday, totaling four tests in the end. Two of them were for Chinese, and I feel that I did well enough on them. The other two were for Software Engineering and Object-Oriented Programming, both having the same format and both taking place on the same night. I was not properly prepared for these last two.

What's in your way?

Currently in my way is the fact that while I have been doing well in this class so far, I was not prepared for kind of test that took place, and so I did not do very well at all. The grade I make on it probably won't make me change this class to a pass-fail one, but it will be a close thing.

What will you do next week?

While next week is spring break, I still have a lot of work to do. I have two programming projects to make decent progress on, a test to study for the Wednesday after spring break, a problem set to do to study for that test, and an assignment for Chinese.

What was your experience of Test #1?

Prior to the test, I had no experience with competitive programming, and that was exactly the format the test was in. In hindsight, I should have known better and studied correctly by doing the in-class exercises a lot, but I didn't think to do that and did poorly on the test as a result. I am a very Google oriented programming. I am constantly googling problems I run into because I am never experienced enough. Having to program with no help was an awful experience, but for the next test, I need to. I do think the time was a little short though. I remembered that somewhere said the test would go for 1 hour 45 minutes, but I can't remember where, so I was expecting to have a little longer.

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

My tip of the semester is to go over the in-class exercises every chance you get, and do as best you can without help from the internet or the answers. It will help you immensely compared to just studying the answers to the exercises.