CS373 Fall 2020: Week 4

Hey everyone! My name is Akshay Mantri, and this is my Week 4 blog post for Software Engineering.

What did you do this past week?

On Monday, I wrapped up and submitted the Collatz project, which I highly enjoyed doing. Once Professor Downing told the class about the IDB1 project, I brainstormed project ideas. Other than that, I mainly just dealt with my other classes and a couple of interviews.

What’s in your way?

Nothing! I feel great, and I super excited to get underway on this new project.

What will you do next week?

My friends and I will start working on the project next week. This will involve plenty of research and planning before we start coding. The big event of the week is going to be the CNS Career Fair, which will take a good chunk out of Wednesday and Thursday.

How was your experience with exceptions, IDB1, and types?

I feel quite comfortable with exceptions, using them, and handling them. I am super excited for the IDB1 project, and can’t wait to get started on it. Python’s typing is a little bit different than that of other languages such as Java, but I’m understanding it well so far.

What made you happy this week?

My birthday was on the 19th this week, so that was a good time! It was a relatively chill week, which was nice, too. Finally, it was fun watching the Cowboys win a game they had no business winning after those 1st quarter hijinks.

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

My pick-of-the-week is a Chrome extension called OctoShop. OctoShop is an extension that primarily does two things. The first is that it compares the price of the product you’re viewing to that product’s prices across other stores, ensuring you are able to find the best price. The second is that it lets you know what items are in stock. What makes OctoShop special is that you can actually set notifications with certain parameters. For example, you can configure your settings for a certain product so that you will receive a notification when the product is in stock and its price has dipped below a certain threshold value that you have set. It’s a great extension, and it has already saved me money on countless occasions!

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