CS371p Spring 2021: Samantha Tuapen

Hello everyone! This is my third blog post for CS 371P: Object-Oriented Programming

What did you do this past week?

I began working on the Collatz project. I was familiar with the workflow because I completed the Collatz project last semester in SWE, but it was a different experience to code the solution and optimizations in C++ instead of Python.

What’s in your way?

At the moment, nothing is in my way of completing this project.

What will you do next week?

I will take some time to play around with writing C++ code and using exception blocks. I also need to read more about passing by reference and the difference between ‘&’ and ‘*’ because those have always been enigmas for me in previous C projects from other classes.

If you read it, what did you think of the Continuous Integration?

Making use of the CI/CD is very helpful for ensuring working code is always on the master (mainline) branch and for reducing the likelihood of merge conflicts.

What was your experience of Collatz?

So far, my experience with Collatz has been going smoothly. I did find myself skipping steps on the workflow without realizing it just because they’re so trivial, but I should work on sticking to it and following directions because it’s great practice for working on bigger projects in industry.

What was your experience of exceptions?

I’m familiar with exceptions in Java and Python, so it was relatively simple to understand this concept in C++ as well. I know it’s useful for handling user errors without causing the whole program to crash, but I haven’t used it a lot in any of my recent projects.

What made you happy this week?

I watched Train to Busan (a thrilling zombie movie in Korean) this past weekend and it was just as great as everyone made it out to be. I also got to meet a lot of new people throughout rush week for my sorority which has been fun and a nice break from school work.

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

A useful tool to help keep track of the hours you spend doing things (i.e. how much time you’ve spent working on Collatz) is Toggl. I have the Chrome extension which lets me just click ‘start’ and ‘stop’ for the timer and assign it to whatever task I list under my projects!

That’s all for this week! Hope you have a fulfilling and productive week ahead :D