CS371p Fall 2021: Blog 4

What did you do this past week?

This past week, I finished up a few assignments for a few different classes. I also started preparing for upcoming exams, as well as preparing the next assignment for the class I TA for.

What’s in your way?

I think my main problem right now is time management. It has been pretty difficult to try and find time to work on all of my assignments, study, take care of TA responsibilities, and work on my job hunt. On the bright side, this will be my last semester with this many classes/responsibilities at once, so I am definitely looking forward to next semester.

What will you do next week?

This coming week, I am going to be fairly busy. I need to have an upcoming assignment handout prepared, I have an exam, and a programming assignment for compilers due Friday. I also hope to get started on the next lab for this class, and maybe work with a partner on that lab!

If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #4: What Happens to Us?

I thought the paper did a great job of discussing the very important issue of sexism in the computer science field. I think a lot of people are reluctant to talk about this issue, either because it does not affect them or because they don’t think it’s a real issue. The testimonies in the paper were very eye opening though, and I definitely learned more about the many different kinds of harassment faced by women in CS. I hope it inspires a lot of people to speak up when they see that kind of behavior, and take proactive steps to prevent it!

What was your experience of Collatz, exceptions, and strcmp?

I was glad to wrap up Collatz, although it felt like there were a lot of small steps to take, so I’m anxious to see if I accidentally forgot anything. I was also very glad to learn about exception handling; it’s one of those things that I’ve been told exists many times, but I haven’t had too much real experience working with exceptions. They are essential for user-facing code, though, and I learned a lot about how they work in C++. The strcmp exercise was pretty straightforward, but a nice refresher in how to use cstrings.

What made you happy this week?

I had a really nice birthday celebration on Friday and was able to spend a lot of time with friends and family. I also got the new WarioWare game for the Switch, which has been a lot of fun!

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

Just in case anyone missed it, GitHub Copilot made a lot of headlines over the summer. It’s an AI-powered programming assistant that was trained on GitHub repositories, and can write entire functions based on whatever needs you describe. I’m not totally sure how I feel about it, but I thought it might be interesting to leave a link here if anyone’s curious!