CS 373 SWE Spring 2020 Week of 10/26: Rishi Salem

What did you do this past week?

This week my group finished phase III of the group project. This time, we were quite happy with the results! There are a few improvements we can make to the design and the code, but that’s the focus of phase IV, so I’d say phase III was a success.

What’s in your way?

We’re planning to meet up as a group to review our processes in phase III and start planning for phase IV. I’m sure we’ll make good progress on the next phase of the project, and perhaps we can finish all the requirements early enough to add the optional comparison function!

What will you do next week?

Next week, I will meet with my group to plan the project> I will also work on my assignments for other classes, since those deadlines are starting to stack up.

If you read it, what did you think of The Dependency Inversion Principle?

This was a particularly useful reading, as I hadn’t thought of the risk of dependencies between classes, and the solution described in the reading (new layers of abstraction between the components) wasn’t one I would have considered. I’m not sure when I’ll use it, but if I’m ever in a situation where it’s useful I’ll be more likely to remember this solution and apply it.

What was your experience of relational algebra in Python? (this question will vary, week to week)

It’s very interesting how much you can do in Python with so few lines! It seems to be a very powerful language. I’m also glad to learn how to apply these relational algebra functions, since the ability to easily manipulate datasets would be helpful in many situations such as Machine Learning.

What made you happy this week?

It was very satisfying to accomplish all the tasks for the group project! I also had time at the end of the week to play games online with a few of my friends — spending time with them was the highlight of my week!

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

My pick-of-the-week is time blocking. Sometimes, when you just have too much work and many projects you are juggling, it can be helpful to set aside concrete blocks of time for each project. While you won’t be able to finish any one project in that time block (unless you’re really lucky), it will keep you from constantly making context switches between your projects and therefore reduce your overhead. It also lets you focus on one task without stressing as much about the others