9th Week of Class

    This past week went pretty well. My partner and I managed to complete the Allocator project on time, although it took us a bit longer than either of us were expecting. Considering we’d started on the first Monday after it had been assigned, I think we both assumed that we would have been done a lot sooner. Unfortunately, we were bogged by numerous little hard to find bugs, but I think we did alright in the end.

    Another thing to note about this project was the Joust competition that Parth Upadhyay conducted during the duration of the project. I thought it was pretty cool idea that probably resulted in a boost of quality for the tests everyone submitted. I would have liked it though if we’d been able to see some of the code for other people’s tests like we’ve been able to in previous projects. It was a annoying to find out that you were failing someone else’s tests, but could not figure out what they were testing. It certainly didn’t help when some of these people decided it would be cute to give all their tests irrelevant or nonsensical names. Regardless, I’d certainly enjoy it if this sort of competition were run again during the next project. It certainly made things a bit more interesting. 

    And lastly, it seems like I might not get the chance to do the next project because I might be dropping this class. Due to a fun little mix-up courtesy of our local Study Abroad department, I have recently been informed that I will be assigned credit for CS 371P after taking a mobile applications class in Ireland during last semester, and it only took them nearly 5 months to let me know! How Mobile Applications transfers over as credit for Object Oriented Programming rather than CS 371M: Mobile Computing is beyond my limited capability of understanding, though. I thought that two mobile-related classes that teach the basics of Android programming might be related, but what do I know? It’s not like I took the Mobile Applications class and enough of the OOP class to know that they teach completely different material.

8th Week of Class

    This last week, we were assigned our next project, to build our own memory allocator. I managed to snag a partner pretty quickly last Sunday, so we were able to get together to try to start working on Monday. We quickly ran into problems however as we tried to understand what we were supposed to be doing. It appeared that no one else had decided to start that day either because Piazza was completely devoid of questions. We had a bit more luck as the week progressed as Prof. Downing talked more about the project in class and our classmates posted more questions and got more answers on Piazza. At the end of the week though, despite getting together to work with my partner almost every day, we didn’t have much progress to show. It was a bit disappointing because we both thought we would almost be finished by Friday given how much time we had put into the project at that point. I guess there’s some perks to getting starting late.

    Our class also got our first test grades back this week. We had seen our multiple choice grades earlier in the week, but we had to wait to see how we’d done on the rest. I got 8/10 correct for the multiple choice portion, and my grade on the rest of the test reflected the same ratio. I suppose I shouldn’t be too upset with what is a pretty decent grade, especially in comparison to my usual grades on CS tests, but I had honestly expected to do better. I had felt really good coming out of that test, so I guess it’s understandable that I would be disappointed with the results. I’m pretty sure I know what I got wrong on the multiple choice part, but I’m at a bit of a loss for the rest of the test. I assume we won’t be getting our tests back to keep (if we do, Prof. Downing hasn’t mentioned it), but at least there will be a test review session on Monday so I can see where I went wrong.

7th Week of Class

    Last week was pretty exciting in that we finally had our first test! I feel like it ended up being a lot easier than I anticipated, but since I haven’t gotten a grade back, I am not entirely sure. I think the ease of the test had to do with the two things: the fact that I spent the better part of a week preparing, going over old notes and quizzes, and that Prof. Downing let us bring in a cheat sheet for use during the test. The page was only a standard 8 x 11 sheet of printer paper, but you’d be surprised at the amount of information that you can cram on each side of the paper if you use a size 10 font. I think I managed pretty much every piece of material that was covered in class leading up to the exam. I was so proud of my cramming skills, that I think it would be easy for anyone to see just how disappointed I was when I only ended up using about a fourth of the information I had written down. Despite what I believe to be an overall success though, there were still a few parts of the test I had difficulty with. Most of these involved the input and output streams in C++. Coming from a mostly Java-based background, I do not really have a lot experience with these, hence my trouble. Regardless, after all was said and done, I like to think I came out on top.

    Details about project 3 were also released in the past few days, following the exam on Thursday. I haven’t had a chance to look at them in too much detail, but I can’t say I properly understand what I have seen. It looks like we’ll be writing an allocator class almost from scratch. This will likely involve some sort of memory management, judging from some of the function names. This makes me a bit nervous as I am not terribly great at working with manually handling memory, but at the very least it will be a good chance for practice.

6th Week of Class

   This week was, in a sense, a short week for CS 371P, at least for me. I had to miss Monday’s class due to an interview I had that morning running exceptionally late. This means that I also missed Monday’s quiz which, from my understanding, gives me a zero in that particular quiz. If I miss five quizzes, my grade also gets dropped down a whole letter, so I guess that means I can only miss three more grades before my grade suffers drastically.

   On the bright side, I also got what I think are my first two hundreds on the quizzes! For once, I actually knew the answers off the top of my head. The fact that it happened twice in a row is no less of a miracle. Maybe I’ll be able to keep it up, though. I’ll keep reviewing the material from last time’s class and doing the reading. I suppose at the very least, it should save me from getting too many flat zeroes on the quizzes.

   In other news, our first test is finally coming up this Thursday. I was pretty nervous until I saw that Prof. Downing had posted on Piazza that we were allowed to bring in a cheat sheet to use on the test. We’re even allowed to write on both sides! I’m not too sure what I’ll put on it yet, though. I’m considering putting some of the more complex or easy to forget examples from Prof. Downing’s class slides. I could put down some of the general concepts we’ve learned in class, but I fear I might have more trouble applying them to the test questions than I would the examples. Besides, I think I learn better from examples.

5th Week of Class

                This week was, for the most part, a pretty good week in the land of Object Oriented Programming. Our second programming project was due this past Wednesday, and I think my partner and I did a pretty good job. We did find ourselves rewriting most of our code at one point, however, when we found that we were overcomplicating our solution. I don’t think Prof. Downing has specifically mentioned it in class, but he does espouse the general spirit of the KISS design principle, which is otherwise known as “keep it simple, stupid,” when it comes to programming. If we’d have kept this in mind, we might have saved ourselves some time. Instead, we just kind of forgot and tried to implement the first idea that came to mind, which wasn’t necessarily the simplest solution we could have come up with. Regardless, we were able to finish reasonably quickly once we that in mind.

                The only downside to this week I would have to say are my grades. While I did get full credit for project 1, I’m still struggling to get anything resembling a decent grade on my quizzes. I’m just not quite sure what to do about them anymore. I pay attention in class, do the assigned readings, and even review the previous lesson’s notes, but I still can’t seem to do well. I suppose the best I can do for now is work on ensuring that my project and test grades are good enough to cover for my quizzes.

                Another thing of note this week was our guest lecture by Aaron Stacy over Git on Friday. We had another guest lecture on Git a couple weeks back, but while that one focused more on how to use Git, this one talked more about the history and potential of the version control system. I honestly enjoy the guest lectures. Its a little change of pace that gives us the opportunity to that may not be directly related to object oriented programming but which many of us would find extremely useful nonetheless. Going through Prof. Downing’s schedule, I don’t think I see any more scheduled, but I hope he adds some in at some point during the semester.

4th Week of Class

    Well, another project is due this week so it’s back to stressing out. In all seriousness, though, I’m grateful to have a partner to work with this time. I agree with the articles Prof. Downing had us read this week over partner programming; it really speeds up progress and ensures a certain level of quality in the code. There numerous times during the last project that I had to go back, look for, and correct minor errors ( e.g. misplaced bracket, missing semicolon, etc.). I’ve yet to encounter a similar error since I’ve started working with my partner on the current project. It also makes it a lot easier to stay on task. When I work alone, I’m constantly distracted by the infinite offerings of the internet but with a partner it’s different. I can’t wander off in search of the next cat GIF; my partner’s depending on me.

    While we’re on the matter of partners, I was surprised by just how easy it was to find one. I didn’t know anyone in the class, so I was dreading having to go through the time-cherished ritual of asking random people in the hope that someone else out there would be willing to pair with a stranger. Fortunately, Prof. Downing set up a teammate search post on Piazza to help speed up the search. I actually didn’t even know this was a feature as I’d never seen any of my other professors use it. I really wish they had since it was so useful.

    Changing the subject, I don’t think most people have notice since Prof. Downing hasn’t mentioned it yet in class, but our first test is coming up in a bit more than a week. He told me during office hours that most of the material would be coming from the lectures, but anything we’d read or seen as part of the class was fair game. To be honest, I’m plenty nervous. While I managed to get a 100 on the first project, my quiz grades haven’t been so hot. Despite keeping up with the readings and trying to review the previous lecture’s materials, I’m still struggling to get a good grade in that department so I’m banking on the test to help keep me afloat. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

P.S. If you're reading this, Prof. Downing, my sincere apologies for this being late. It's been a crazy past couple of weeks, and it just slipped my mind. I hope that's acceptable.