- What did you do this past week?
This past week I’ve been working through all my school assignments and readings and trying to familiarize myself with the material now that things are starting to ramp up. I’ve been going back and taking more detailed notes on my iPad and it really helps me retain the information I learned a lot better! I went back and installed the Docker images for python and typescript and am trying to familiarize myself with it currently.
2. What’s in your way?
I think what’s in my way is all my other coursework and extracurricular activities that are demanding a lot from me right now. I tend to take a really long time to accomplish tasks so I can never get as much done as I would like to, but I plan to start the Collatz assignment today and get my Git workflow set up.
3. What will you do next week?
Next week I plan to continue working on the Collatz assignment and familiarize myself with the required tasks that I’ve never done before like writing issues in GitLab and running the coverage tool on my unit tests. I hope to complete the assignment by Sunday, so that I can ask TAs in the next few days if there’s anything I am missing to ensure that I get full credit on the assignment.
4. If you read it, what did you think of the makefile?
I thought it was pretty straightforward. I’ve always had to use makefiles in the past, but I never really understood what they’re doing until the Perusall assignment where it really started to make sense what they’re used for. Essentially, they are shortcut commands that you can call in order to execute a sequence of commands at once. The makefile will definitely come in handy during development of the first project.
5. What was your experience of Docker? (this question will vary, week to week)
Docker is a really cool piece of software. I have previously used VMs a lot in the past and now I’m excited to become more familiar with Docker through this class so that I don’t have to have huge VM files taking up memory on my computer. I did run into an error with the “boost libaries” when I was setting up the Docker images, so I still need to ask about that issue with TAs. But I look forward to actually putting the Docker images to use for the project.
6. What was your experience of assertions? (this question will vary, week to week)
I used assertions a lot during our OS projects, so I have familiarity with them, but I really liked the Professor Downing made the distinction between when they are useful and when they are not. I now realize that they are not ideal for testing, but come in handy when verifying pre-conditions and post-conditions, as well as user errors.
7. What was your experience of unit tests? (this question will vary, week to week)
I didn’t know that python, javascript, java, and other languages had built in libraries for unit testing, so that was really cool to see! That makes testing programs a lot easier, so I’m excited to start using them.
8. What made you happy this week?
I watched the Blackpink Live Concert with friends yesterday so that was really fun. :)
9. What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My tip-of-the-week for software development is learning React. React is a front-end Javascript library used to develop UIs. There’s a bit of a learning curve involved and I’m still trying to get the hang of it, but a lot of companies are moving into using React to develop their front ends so I think it’s worth looking into!
