CS 373 Fall 2020: Week 3

Hey everyone! My name is Akshay Mantri, and this is my Week 3 blog post for Software Engineering.

What did you do this past week?

This week I worked on the Collatz project. I also completed a couple of interviews for new graduate positions. It was a super busy week with high workloads from my other classes, but it was also a satisfying week.

What’s in your way?

Time still remains the primary hurdle for me. The next few days are going to remain busy, so, hopefully, they go well. Aside from that, I’m looking forward to a great week!

What will you do next week?

Next week, I plan on completing assignments for all 6 of my classes (yeah, they’re all due the same week, unfortunately). I also have a couple of interviews lined up for next week. I’ll also try to stay active by working out a couple of times.

What was your experience of Collatz, the starter code, the makefile, its optimizations, and exceptions?

Collatz was a fun project, as it was a seemingly simple problem that got increasingly harder the more I tried to optimize. The starter code was great in that it provided a clean skeleton structure. The makefile was a great learning experience as to what directives need to be listed out. I understood the optimizations especially because of the way Professor Downing explained them to the class. Finally, the exceptions were familiar territory, having used them, and the ways to handle them, for years.

What made you happy this week?

There were two things that made me especially happy this week. The first is that I had a few coding challenges and interviews go very well. The other is that I got to watch some thrilling US Open matches such as Zverev vs. Bautista Agut and Thiem vs Zverev.

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

My tip of the week is to communicate with others if you’re struggling with a topic. I wasted a lot of time this week trying to understand certain topics that it took 10 minutes for a peer to explain to me. It was smooth sailing after that, but I need to remember to reach out for help earlier if I need it.

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