CS 373 Spring 2021 Week 3: Zein Fakhreddine

What did you do this past week?

Last week I continued to work on the Collatz project. I am spending the majority of my time fine tuning my optimizations and trying to past the third test on HackerRank. I also spent time doing projects and homework for other classes.

What’s in your way?

I have been a lot less on top of things this semester compared to last. I need to focus more and be more organized. I am not good at optimizing my programs and was not expecting it in this class. I’m constantly watching professor Downing's lectures on optimizations we should implement and trying to think of my own as well.

What will you do next week?

I will finish the Collatz project on time and try to be more organized than I was this week.

What did you think of the Continuous Integration?

I found it interesting and thought the author had a lot of good tips on how to avoid common pitfalls. I particularly liked how the author gave tips on how to avoid issues with regards to branch conflicts. I am very new to the concept of continuous integration but hope to learn more as we implement it in future projects.

What was your experience of Collatz?

So far I think I am having a more difficult time than other time. As mentioned previously I’m bad at this kind of optimization programming. I’m having trouble fine tuning the sizes of my different caches. I know I’ll be happy when I eventually pass all the tests on HackerRank but for now it is pretty frustrating. I think I underestimated on difficult I would find this project.

What was your experience of exceptions?

Exceptions are not that new to me so I got the hang of it pretty quick. Some of the nuances around when code executes / does not execute was interesting. Professor Downing did a really good job on explaining exactly how exceptions work and how to use them.

What made you happy this week?

I got to see my brother after not seeing each other for awhile due to me being out of the country.

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

My tip of the week is to start projects early. Often if I think a project is easy I can push it bac but my starting a project early you can get an actual feel on how long the project will take you.