CS373 Spring 2021: Matthew Bianchi

Week 2

What did you do this past week?

This past week has been very busy in most of my other classes. I have begun projects in all of my other courses, which are taking up a surprising amount of time this early in the semester.

What's in your way?

The main thing in my way is lack of time. The fact that I have many projects in different classes makes time management more and more important.

What will you do next week?

This coming week, I intend to get started working on my project for this class, and hopefully I will be able to make significant progress on it relatively early on.

If you read it, what did you think of the makefile?

The makefile seemed like a very useful and powerful tool, simplifying many functions into a simple command. I have used makefiles in the past, and they have been a great help, especially as projects get larger and the build process gets more intricate.

What was your experience of Docker?

I have used Docker minimally in the past, but I found it to be a useful resource and one that I will definitely use in this course as we move forward. It makes it a lot easier to setup and use environments for programming without having to deal with the hassle of downloading everything yourself, which makes it very useful for working remotely like we are this semester.

What was your experience of assertions?

I have worked with assertions quite a bit in many different capacities, but the most useful one for me is to use them to verify that starting and ending conditions of functions are being met. It is very important that functions are not given unexpected inputs, and these assertions help verify that is not the case.

What was your experience of unit tests?

I have used unit tests extensively when I took Object-Oriented Programming last spring, and I felt them useful in finding potential bugs in programs. I find them to be very important to use, as it makes sure your code is always checking different edge cases and making it easier to figure out if or when you break the code.

What made you happy this week?

My girlfriend came down to visit me this weekend, which was nice since we haven’t been able to see each other much this year. That was a very happy end to a bit of a stressful week for me.

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

My tip of the week is particularly important for group projects, especially when working alone. When working with groups online, it is important to actually communicate and work with your groups. Many groups work on parts of projects individually, and then come together to combine all of them. This is useful in some aspects, but I think it is important for groups to know what is going on from start to finish, and when possible meet up to work on the project. Even though it is difficult due to our current situation, try and figure out a time where you can meet, since it will make the group work better together.