CS371p Spring 2021: Week 2

Blog Post 2

What did you do this past week?

I spent most of this week doing reading assignments. I feel I have already fallen behind since I have worksheets/projects that I have not started much on.

What’s in your way?

Mostly procrastination but also chores and other mundane things needing to be done that can take away time from the day.

What will you do next week?

I plan on getting most if not all of the aforementioned assignments that I currently have assigned done throughout the week (hopefully).

If you read it, what did you think of the makefile?

It is confusing. I have used makefiles before but mostly only for simple commands (hard-coding commands I would otherwise have to type out in the terminal). There are a lot of syntax rules, commands, variables, etc. being used, and while I generally understand what most things do it may take a while to understand exactly what every thing is doing.

What was your experience of Docker? (this question will vary, week to week)

I have heard of docker and have been meaning to learn how to use it, so I am glad that we are covering it in this course. There have already been multiple instances in other classes where having a docker image I could share with team mates would have made things simpler.

What was your experience of assertions? (this question will vary, week to week)

I have used assertions before and they are very handy. I used a lot in the OS class I took last semester. Rather than having to manually examine code with breakpoints or print statements, assertions are a quick and easy automatic way to check for any weird behavior in your code before it reaches some potentially confusing error.

What was your experience of unit tests? (this question will vary, week to week)

I have also used unit tests before, but tend to not use them if they are not required for a project. I do see the benefit of using them especially for bigger programs with much more code, but I find myself taking the lazy route most of the time (hand testing/running basic test scripts). Hopefully this semester I will be able to get used to writing them so I will be less opposed to using them more often.

What made you happy this week?

I’ve been meaning to try out the Monster Hunter Rise demo with a friend of mine and finally got around to doing it this weekend just before it ended.

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

Sometimes it’s easier to understand something just by playing around with it. For example with makefiles, rather than reading a long list of commands/arguments and what they do, I found it more intuitive and much easier to understand writing out test makefiles and seeing what does what.