CS371p: Week 6

What did you do this past week?

I spent a lot of time this week doing the Voting assignment. I actually tried to start by myself over the little break we got due to the winter storm, but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around the entire concept. However, when Professor Downing explained it in class on Wednesday, I felt as if everything was a lot more digestible. It helped a lot to slowly yet methodically think through the whole process, forgetting about optimizations at first.

What’s in your way?

At the moment, since I’ve finished the Voting project, I need to really get started on my other classes’ projects. Although the other projects are due earlier, I was really excited to finish this one.

What will you do next week?

Next week (and this weekend), I’ll need to get started on my other classes’ projects, particularly Multicore Operating Systems. I also hope to learn more about C++ in class next week, as all the lectures each day have been really informative and useful.

What did you think of the Single Responsibility Principle?

I think that this principle has a lot of benefits with very little downsides. It sounds almost like an extension of modularity, where we want to separate functionality to the smallest possible unit of work. This allows for reuse, makes purpose very clear, and makes building upon functionality much easier.

What was your experience of Voting and consts?

I really liked this way of having voting; it seems to make a lot of intuitive sense and allows the “best” candidate to win. As for consts, I knew that they existed, but I didn’t know so many variations did. I had no idea that they could be applied to pointers, so that was a really interesting concept to touch upon for me.

How did you fare in the storm?

My apartment was really lucky to keep power and heating on the whole time, so we actually housed a ton of people who didn’t. For a couple days, we had 10 people living with us! But we did lose water for around one and a half days, which compared to some other areas, is not bad at all.

What made you happy this week?

I was really happy when I turned on my faucet and water came out.

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

My tip of the week is to stay positive! I remember during the winter storm, especially when we didn’t have water and were stuck inside all day, motivation/morale was super low and I felt pretty awful for a couple of days. However, as things got better outside, I felt better, got back into my routine, and felt much more ready to begin work.