CS371p Spring 2021: Week 3

Blog Post 3

1. What did you do this past week?

This week I got started on the Collatz project. Rather than the code itself a lot of time was spent getting things set up and figuring out how everything worked together. I also spent some time on the Algorithms assignment that was due this week.

2. What’s in your way?

I am beginning to get assigned projects and homework in other classes and have to manage my time better in order to stay on top of everything.

3. What will you do next week?

The beginning of the week will be spent finalizing the collatz submission. I then plan on spending most of the week on the Networking class’ project with hopefully enough time to catch up on assignments in other classes.

4. If you read it, what did you think of the Continuous Integration?

It contained a lot of handy info and reasons to use source control like git. A lot of group projects I have been a part of have used git/CI and it has helped tremendously. Every company I have talked to uses some form of CI and it’s hard to imagine that there was a time when it wasn’t common place.

5. What was your experience of Collatz? (this question will vary, week to week)

The Collatz algorithm itself wasn’t too bad. The biggest time sink of the project was getting used to all the different tools we needed in order to complete the project. Other than that trying the different optimizations one at a time and seeing the improvement bump after each one was pretty cool.

6. What was your experience of exceptions? (this question will vary, week to week)

I had known of them before, but had never really used them. It was handy to learn more of exactly how they worked. (Child exceptions being caught by parent catch clauses, exceptions going up the call stack, etc.)

7. What made you happy this week?

A project in one of my other classes got delayed and gave me much needed time to catch up in that class and other classes as well. Also the weather seems to be getting warmer and as someone who prefers hot to cold I am excited for when I won’t have to bundle up anymore.

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

Get started on assignments early… I put off assignments (like this one) until later and end up forgetting about it. Even if they are simple assignments, better to get it out of the way early and not have to worry about forgetting it later.