CS 371p Object Oriented Programming: Final Entry
- What did you like the least about the class?
I wasn’t too fond of the exam format. While I understand that testing knowledge is important, I feel that a lot of what we learned was covered in the coding projects and that the exams only tested how well we coded under heavy time pressure. Personally, I found I made more silly errors in the exams than I did while practicing, like forgetting semicolons or misspelling variable names, and that cost me several precious minutes.
2. What did you like the most about the class?
I loved the coding projects. The problems we needed to solve were interesting and I liked having to create several classes to solve those problems. This class was more planning-heavy and less algorithms- and optimization-focused than other classes I have taken, and I enjoyed the experience.
3. What’s the most significant thing you learned?
I think the most significant thing I learned was that a good coding environment can make or break a project. If I’d had my current setup in OS instead of having to use GDB to find all my errors, I could have saved hours.
4. How many hours a week did you spend coding/debugging/testing for this class?
I spent an average of five hours per week on the coding assignments. This time was heavily weighted towards the weeks those projects were due, though, as it was primarily spent debugging.
5. How many hours a week did you spend reading/studying for this class?
I spent about an hour each week going over the notes, except on the weeks before exams when I practiced coding the classes I was expected to create.
6. How many lines of code do you think you wrote?
Including tests and code I had to rewrite, I think I wrote about 2000–4000 lines of code this semester.
7. What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?
Funnily enough, the tool I used the most wasn’t one that we covered in class — it was Visual Studio. Not only can it connect to version control like gitlab and github and run google test, it can be used to debug c++ code using any custom input and output. While debuggers aren’t that uncommon, I found it much more helpful to use the visual studio UI to easily see the values stored in all my variables, especially when I was dealing with arrays and object double-pointers. Setting up visual studio easily saved me more time than any other tool I tried this semester.
8. How did you feel about the two-stage quizzes and tests?
I did enjoy the fact that they were two-stage. This made it easier to learn from questions I missed, as I received near-immediate feedback on what I missed and what the correct answer was.
9. How did you feel about the cold calling, in the end?
I felt that it was very helpful in keeping my attention on the class. Even on days I wasn’t called on to speak, I found the interactions between Professor Downing and the students more engaging to hear than an ordinary lecture would have been. Cold calling also provided a safe way to fail, as when I answered incorrectly there was little consequence to it. This was quite refreshing.
