Sep 5: CS371p Fall 2020 Blog
This series of blog posts are assignments of my CS 371p course.
1. What did you do this past week?
Last week I attended classes for my four courses, Computer Systems, Object-Oriented Programming, Real Analysis I, and Big Data in Biology (FRI). In Computer Systems, we are asked to implement a heap, and I am currently working on this assignment. I feel it is much more challenging than the critical section from the previous week as there are many more edge cases to consider. For OOP, I finished the Collatz project. I had an issue with the provided code not reading the acceptance test cases properly, but I resolved it by changing every int to long. I’m actually not too sure as to why this works, as the problem was with the getline() function. In my Big Data in Biology course, we were introduced to the project that we will be working on and are practicing bash scripting. Finally, my Real Analysis course is exactly what you’d probably expect in a math course: learning axioms during lessons and homework every week for the rest of the semester with two exams.
2. What’s in your way?
Mostly coursework is in my way. Computer Systems is said to be one of the toughest courses in the department, OOP and Big Data in Biology are both project-heavy, and Real Analysis is proof-heavy, so I’m expecting quite a fun semester.
3. What will you do next week?
Next week will be very similar to this week: absorbing new content and applying them on assignments and projects.
4. What was your experience of assertions, Google Test, and gcov? (this question will vary, week to week)
I had experiences with assertions before, but not with Google Test and gcov. They are very similar to Python’s Unittest and coverage, so they were simpler to understand.
5. How are you doing and holding up? What’s been most helpful for you in terms of support at this time?
I’m doing alright during this difficult period. The most helpful for me is that all my professors and TA’s are very accessible even though the courses are all online, and I don’t feel that the online format prevented me from getting help on anything that I need.
6. What made you happy this week?
I’m very into building PC’s, and I ordered a lot of very, very inexpensive used and old parts off eBay to resolve my hunger for building another computer. The parts all arrived this week, so I’m quite happy with that. The GPU, however, is malfunctioning, but everything else works. I can’t explain why I enjoy building and fixing them up so much, but fortunately, it’s this rather than going to overcrowded parties right now.
7. What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
For those who are a bit unfamiliar with git, this (it’s clickable) will definitely help with understanding branches.
