CS371p: Week 3

What did you do this past week?

This week, I spent a lot of time working on the Collatz project 1. Although I got the simple solution fairly quickly, I had to spend some more time understanding how to cache intermediate values in a more optimal way. Another setback I encountered was that I was using an unordered map as my cache instead of something that doesn’t have to be dynamically resized. Fixing that sped my solution up a lot!

What’s in your way?

Because I had to spend some time on this project this week, I didn’t get as ahead in my other classes as I would have liked. I definitely need to spend some time this weekend to make enough progress that I’m comfortable with in my other classes’ homework.

What will you do next week?

I’ll be a lot more free next week because I finished the Collatz project, so I’ll be able to spend more time in my other classes. I did slack off a bit this week and gave myself some more free time in doing nothing, but hopefully, that will help me recharge so I can be productive next week!

If you read it, what did you think of the Continuous Integration?

Continuous Integration seems incredibly useful in maintaining a large codebase that gets touched by many developers. It automates away the process and adds another layer of safety when attempting to make changes. I’ll be sure to incorporate this in some projects in the future!

What was your experience of Collatz?

I thought Collatz was a good learning experience. The project itself wasn’t incredibly difficult, helping me get used to the Gitlab environment. One of my biggest takeaways was the fact that my solution could be very slow if I used a dynamically resizing data structure as a cache.

What was your experience of exceptions?

I haven’t had much experience with using exceptions, but I hope to use it more now that I’ve learned it in lecture.

What made you happy this week?

It makes me happy that I am able to relax and spend more time with friends without worrying about my assignments as much. I think it’s a combination of having good time management and being kind to yourself!

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

I function much better when I do a little bit of my bigger projects every day rather than squeeze it all into the day right before it’s due! I feel way less stressed and flexible in my time.