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

What did you do this past week?

This week, my group finished our visualizations and started refactoring our code. We also extended our unit tests and started working on our presentation video. We’re making good progress!

What’s in your way?

We are still having a bit of trouble meeting up, but we’ve come up with workarounds. For example, we’re recording our parts of the presentation individually and are planning to edit them together in the presentation video, so we don’t all have to be present when making the video.

What will you do next week?

Next week is Thanksgiving, so I’ll work on finishing all my homework in the first two days and spend a lot of time with family for the actual break! It’s been a while since I got to really play board games or watch movies with them.

If you read it, what did you think of What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You?

A lot of the behaviors the women described in that reading seem unimaginable to me, which says a lot about the difference in experience between genders. I don’t have much to add to the reading, just that it’s important for men to be aware of what’s happening so we can notice bad behavior and call it out.

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

I love refactoring! There’s something very satisfying about taking code that does its job but is hard to read or modify, and making it “as good on the inside as it is on the outside”. It was nice to formally learn techniques for refactoring, like making regression tests at the beginning or using polymorphism to eliminate if-else blocks or switch statements.

What made you happy this week?

This week, I made snickerdoodles and shepherd’s pie! They were both quite tasty.

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

For those of you using Visual Studio Code and who need to ssh into the lab machines, I recommend the VS Code Remote Explorer extension! It’s capable of accessing remote machines, running virtual machines, or even running code in a docker container. I’ve found it especially helpful on school projects, because it lets me run code on UTCS lab machines as though I’m running it locally, but it’s helpful in many other situations as well!