CS371p Fall 2021 blog 10: Zein Fakhreddine

What did you do this past week?

In the earlier part of the week I was mostly studying for an algorithms test I had on Wednesday. Once that was over with the rest of the week was pretty quite. For OOP, I continued to join lectures, take the quizzes, and work on the exercises. I also began setting up the code for project 4, Darwin, but have not done much more than that.

What’s in your way?

Thankfully not much is in my way. Next week is looking fairly typical so that should give me some time to invest in project 4. Hopefully I can finally finish this project early even though I say that for every project.

What will you do next week?

Next week I’ll continue to work through project 4. I have some other small assignments in my other classes due at the beginning of the week. After those are finished I can dedicate time to the project.

If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #11: Getters and Setters?

This paper has stuck with me ever since I read it in SWE last semester. It was nice to get another refresher on it. I remember being confused when I was first introduced to get/set methods. They just seemed like public variables with extra steps. This article helped in explaining there downsides and how to go about not using them.

What was your experience of vector?

I really enjoyed this exercise. I had a really good team with me and we were able to finish the exercise fairly early. I enjoy how it gave us insight into how data structures in C++ are created. This also helps give me a more intuitive feel of what exactly is going on when I use vector.

What made you happy this week?

I was actually pleasantly surprised with how my algorithms test went. I do not know for sure yet, but I think I did pretty good.

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

https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/create-dev-container

If you are using VS Code and Professor Downing's docker image for the project I highly recommend you create a development container, if you aren’t already. This basically runs a VS Code instance as if it is in the docker container rather than just having a terminal of the container.

To do it you’ll need to install the Containers extension and add a devcontainer.json to the root of your project folder. In that file add:

{
  "image": "gpdowning/gcc"
}

From there you’ll be able to reopen the VS Code instance using that image from the command pallet (Using the Containers extension).

I feel like just figuring this out in project 4 makes me late to the party but it is really helpful once you get it setup.