CS371p Fall 2021: Blog 3

What did you do this past week?

This past week I worked on the various programming assignments and other work that I have been assigned. A lot of my time was spent working on and debugging the first lab for Compilers, which has been a great review of C programming. I also more recently completed the Collatz lab for this class, which was a nice introduction to C++ programming / testing.

What’s in your way?

I think I am actually in a pretty good spot as far as classes go at the moment! The one downside to this week was that my group & I tried to improve our answer to the exercise after receiving some last minute feedback, but we ultimately ran out of time and submitted a broken solution.

What will you do next week?

This next week will hopefully be pretty light as far as assignments go. I plan on starting the next lab for compilers, and preparing the upcoming assignment for the class I’m TAing for. I’m also looking forward to holding a birthday party with some friends this Friday!

If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #3: Continuous Integration?

This was another paper that I believe I read last semester, but it was a great refresher on the principles of continuous integration. I got to work with continuous integration at my internship over the summer, and it definitely saved a lot of headaches that would have otherwise happened during the development cycle. I was impressed that multiple members of multiple teams were able to simultaneously modify the same codebase without too much communication or too many issues.

What was your experience of IsPrime and Collatz optimizations?

Both of these were nice refreshers, and I always find it interesting how many different small optimizations exist for determining whether or not a number is prime, especially considering how important this question is to computing in general.

What made you happy this week?

I finally got a couch for my apartment and also got to try a few new local restaurants around Austin. I’ve also still been enjoying being back on campus, and I’m very glad that I have this opportunity in my last couple of semesters.

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

If you’re interested in web dev and haven’t already, the GitHub Student Developer Pack offers a ton of free trials / credits for various web services, like website hosting and domain name registration. Check it out if you’re trying to build a web-based personal project!