CS 373 Fall 2020: Week 2

Hey everyone! My name is Akshay Mantri, and this is my Week 2 blog post for Software Engineering.

What did you do this past week?

This week I prepped for the Collatz project. I attended lectures (and rewatched them), I experimented with GitLab a little bit, and I looked a little bit into potential proofs for the Collatz Conjecture.

What’s in your way?

Time is the primary hurdle for me. As the 6 classes on my schedule start increasing workloads, and as recruiting season continues to ramp up, I’m finding less and less time to relax and reset. Hopefully, everything will work out just fine. Coding the Collatz project shouldn’t present much trouble, thankfully.

What will you do next week?

I plan on completing the Collatz project by Saturday of next week. That way, I can focus on the paper and the blog next Sunday. Not having a project to work on during the weekend will also allow me to de-stress.

What was your experience of assertions, unit tests, and coverage?

I’ve known about assertions (and their limitations) for a while now, especially thanks to Operating Systems. The unit test framework that Professor Downing showed was quite interesting in how all the tests could run despite assertions being failed. The coverage tool was also cool because it allows us to evaluate the efficacy of our tests.

How are you doing and holding up? What’s been most helpful for you in terms of support at this time?

I’m honestly doing great right now! Despite being super busy, I’m finding some meaningful time to relax. My roommate has actually been great support so far. We do a lot of things together, whether it be studying, playing video games, or watching a TV show.

What made you happy this week?

Playing Among Us with my brother brought me great joy. We had a blast competing against each other, trolling, etc. and I’m blessed to live in an age where my brother and I can enjoy the same game at the same time despite being 300 miles apart.

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

I recently came across a cool Chrome extension called Grepper, which is a tool that shows some code at the top of the search page when you Google something code-related. It’s supposed to work like how Google shows the scores for a team when you search up the team name. Although it hasn’t been too useful for met yet (it works a bit better for basic coding questions), this tool deserves a lot of merit in the goals it’s trying to achieve. As the platform grows and more people contribute answers, this tool will only become more and more useful.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll be back next week!