CS 373 SWE Spring 2020 Week of 9/7: Rishi Salem

What did you do this past week?

This week, I finished project 1! It went much more smoothly than I expected. While there were a few situations where I coded something that wasn’t legal in python, or had a bug because I didn’t know how to deal with the lack of declared types for variables, I didn’t encounter any problems I couldn’t solve without a simple google search. I was much luckier than I expected!

I also managed to install the Windows Subsystem for Linux. It seems to work similarly to using a lab machine, so by combining this with Docker I believe I will be ready when it’s time for the group projects as well!

What's in your way?

There is nothing in my way right now. I’m ready for the next project!

What will you do next week?

I assume the next project will be released soon, so I will be ready for that. I also would like to test Docker, but since I don’t know what tools I should be testing, I’ll wait for further information to be released before I make any plans.

What was your experience of Collatz, the starter code, the makefile, its optimizations, and exceptions? (this question will vary, week to week)

Project 1 went quite well, in my opinion! The makefile was very easy to use, the tools were very helpful for writing good code and good tests, and the starter code and tests were very helpful in demonstrating the proper grammar for Python code. The optimizations might have been difficult normally, but since I had already created similar code in c++ while taking Object-Oriented Programming, I was familiar with the logic I’d need to create and use a meta cache, and rewriting the code took very little time.

Exceptions seem to be very helpful in Python. This is because unlike in the other languages I’ve worked with, you cannot simply use a global variable as a flag. I shudder to think how you would handle race conditions like the ones we hadnled in Operating Systems…

What made you happy this week?

Almost all my classes had major projects, and I finished them all on time! That was a major relief for me.

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

I mentioned WSL earlier in my post. While I haven’t used it too much by itself, installing it allows Visual Studio to test code as though it was on a Linux machine, which is much more convenient than my usual process of ssh-ing into a lab machine. For those of you using a Windows machine, I highly recommend it!