CS 373 Fall 2020: Samantha Tuapen

Hi everyone! This is my fifth blog post for CS 373: Software Engineering

What did you do this past week?

I spent this past week meeting many times with my IDB group to finalize our project proposal. We brainstormed an idea, drafted a proposal, then scrapped it 3 separate times until at last we came to our final version with all the models, APIs, and attributes fleshed out. It was a lot more work than we anticipated, but I’m just glad we have a better understanding of the purpose of our site and RESTful APIs to support it.

In regards to the rest of my life, the ‘overwhelming’ project from my Info Retrieval class last week ended up not being that stressful after all and the career brunch and career fair went well, though the day definitely felt super long.

What’s in your way?

I have little to no experience in using Postman to design APIs and using Typescript with React for the frontend. I’m very thankful for Larry’s video on Postman and I’ve taken some time to familiarize myself with React and Typescript, so even though I have quite a bit of learning and practicing to do, I’m excited to get to work with these technologies.

Another reason why we took so long to finalize our project proposal was our inability to find resourceful REST APIs. After watching Larry’s video, however, it was way easier to find the APIs we need.

What will you do next week?

Next week, I will be working very diligently with my IDB group to complete Phase I by the deadline. I want to work on both the static pages for the front end and designing the API, so I’ll try to take on tasks in both deliverables. I also want to have a strong start on Phase II so I hope my group and I can get started on that ASAP after submitting Phase I to lessen our stress in the future. I will also begin to work on the backend in whichever framework our group decides. Since I’ve only worked with Node.js as a backend, I’ll have to learn either Flask or Django, which I’m excited for.

What was your experience of types, object models, and iterators?

I was familiar with the basic types in Python that can be seen in the context of Java, like int, float, list and set, however I learned of some new types in that aren’t explicitly in Java like frozenset and tuple. I am also now aware that while Java objects can be like a tree and forests, in Python, everything derives from object, hence why, for example, Python containers like lists can have hold different types of data because at the root, they’re all objects. As for iterators, I’ve used them before in Java and I was surprised to learn that Python iterators don’t have a hasNext() function. I never took the time to comprehend this myself before, but it made sense when Professor Downing said that iterators exist to be the intermediate object between an iterable container and a client, so multiple clients can iterate over the same container at the same time.

What made you happy this week?

This past week was a lot less stressful than the previous because I was able to complete the tasks I assigned myself on their respective days so I was never really ‘behind’. Plus, I even found some time in the evenings to myself to just lay in bed and watch some Netflix before going to bed.

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

When it comes to new technologies, I learn best by actually working with it hands-on with a very comprehensive guide. For people who are new to React and need a well-explained tutorial and explanation of React components, I found this article by Tania Rascia to be extremely helpful in jogging my memory in React again.

Thanks for reading my blog post this week! Don’t forget to take some time for yourself this week :)