CS371p Fall 2020: Amit Samuel
What did you do this past week?
This past week was spent preparing for midterms. I had my first midterm on Friday, and I spent the entirety of the week studying for it. Luckily, I finished all my assignments in the previous week so that I could have time to just study.
What’s in your way?
In one of my classes “Comtemporary Issues in Computer Science”, we had a dabate, which I wanted to be a debater for. However, becasue I had so many exams to study for I wouldn’t have had time to prepare for it. So I was very dissapointed I didn’t get to do that.
What will you do next week?
Next week I will have two more exams, so I will have to study for both over the weekend. I have “Comtemporary Issues in Computer Science” on Tuesday, and then OOP on Wednesday and Thursday. That puts me in a unfavorable position with regards to the programming assignment. I will only have 5 days to complete it since I’m so busy studying right now.
If you read it, what did you think of The Open-Closed Principle?
I think the Open-Closed principal is a fundamental aspect of Object Oriented Design. It is one of the reasons OOP is so powerful in an industry context, and it why so many professors at UT make sure to emphasize it.
What was your experience of iterator concepts, std::array, and std::vector? (this question will vary, week to week)
I was familiar with java iterators pretty well, and I’ve had to use C++ iterators occasionally to complete particular tasks. But getting an indepth analysis of iterators has been very benficial to me. I now feel comfortable with them in almost every aspect. I very glad Dr. Downing went over these std structures. For the longest time I didn’t know the difference between them and the built in ones. And I didn’t know that std::array was stack allocated and that std::vector was heap allocated. I thought they were the exact same thing for no reason at all. But now I know and I’m better because of it.
What made you happy this week?
Well earlier this week I was able to finally relax a little a play pokemon. That is usually something I like to do in my free time. I also spent a lot of time on zoom with my girlfriend. It’s nice to simply do work with her in my presence.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My tip of the week is actually related to pokemon. I recently discovery the source code for the original pokemon game created in 1995. It’s all on github and It’s all in assembly. I thought it was fascinating how clear cut some of the actions were, and how easy it would be for someone of my knowledge to alter code to hack the game. Despite that, it’s still a fully functional, enjoyable game. I also think it’s amazing how far video game development has come since then. If you’ve seen any recent pokemon games, they would be largely unatainable given the technology and programming/graphics techniques of the past.
