CS371p Fall 2021 blog 4: Zein Fakhreddine
What did you do this past week?
At the beginning of the week I finished the Collatz project. I continued to attend lectures and spend some time out of class familiarizing myself more with C++. For my other classes I continued to try not to get so far behind.
What’s in your way?
Aside from general laziness not much is in my way. Next week I have a lot of quizzes and projects that will be due so the biggest thing to focus on this week is to make sure I do not get behind.
What will you do next week?
Most of my classes are now becoming fully in person. As I mentioned before I need to make sure I don’t get behind in theses classes. I’m hoping being fully in person will increase my work ethic. I’ve noticed that going to class in person increases my ability to pay attention and generally increases my work ethic throughout the day.
If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #4: What Happens to Us?
Pieces like this are extremely important. They help to educate us on the struggles women can face in tech/academia. A lot of the interactions outlined in the paper were shocking to me. I’m privileged as a man to not have to worry about these kinds of interactions. I really hope if I ever find myself in a scenario were I notice some form of blatant sexism I will speak out because that's the least I can do. I also hope that papers like this will encourage others to come forward and share their stories.
What was your experience of Collatz, exceptions, and strcmp?
The Collatz project was fairly easy because I had the same project in SWE last semester. That being said because I had such low expectations for the project I pushed it off way farther than I should have and I hope to start on subsequent assignments earlier. Exceptions also were not too bad as I was already familiar with the concepts discussed. Finally the strcmp exercise was deceptively simple and my group and I struggled a fair bit but eventually were able to figure it out.
What made you happy this week?
I was happy that many of my classes, including this one, announced going to in person. I know everyone's experience and feeling about online classes is different but at least for me I am much happier in an in-person setting.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/about
My pick-of-the-week is Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Once setup it basically allows you to run a Linux environment that can directly interact with your Windows machine. As opposed to a virtual machine or server which usually have separate file systems WSL gives you the power of Linux without having to switch over to a new set of files. It’s fairly easy to setup and worth it in my opinion.
