Woohoo! :)

It's the end of a great semester of CS 313E!!!! Everything is submitted and now it's just a waiting game for the results. For this final blog post, Professor Downing would like us to focus on summarizing our individual experiences over the course of the semester.

Well, if you remember anything from my series of posts, remember how important it is to go to class. GO. TO. CLASS. Besides the fact that A.) you pay for it and B.) 21% of your grade depends on it, the amount of time you'll have to spend outside of class interpreting new concepts will be significantly reduced. You can alternatively spend precious out-of-class study time practicing software development with the new concepts. 

Practice is so important to your success in this class. Whether it's redoing the daily quizzes or re-coding bits of the projects, you should try to spend several hours a week just writing lines of Python code. Hear me people. Write code. That's how you'll do well in this class. You might think that piece of advice should go without saying since this is, indeed, a computer science course. However, I want to emphasize how useful it is to go beyond just being able to identify concepts in this class. The projects, quizzes, and tests won't ask you to regurgitate concepts, they will ask you to interpret them....into code.

Last, but not least, I'm putting my 100% stamp of approval on any inkling you have to take this course. Not only will you improve on your programming skills, you will improve on your communication, teamwork, and analytic skills. Professor Downing is a great professor that chooses to go the extra mile to ensure students develop practical skills that will earn them more than just CS course credit. 

Have a wonderful break and Merry Christmas! :D
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JL

Hey y'all!

Only two quizzes and one exam left for CS 313e! It's been a great learning experience thus far and I'm looking forward to this week! Project 5 went well and I had another great pair programming experience. I'm proud to say that each of my four pair programming experiences this semester have been positive!

Much of our end-of-semester energy has been focused on exploring various sorting algorithms. We've discussed Bubble Sort, Selection Sort, Insertion Sort, and Merge Sort. According to our class schedule, the Merge Sort lecture was the last lecture of the semester. I'm assuming Monday's and Wednesday's classes will be reviews for the exam on Thursday. Regarding the exam, throughout the latter part of the course I've been jotting down notes with Professor Downing gives us hints as to what we should expect on Exam 2. I've also been marking parts of my notes that I think will be highlighted on the exam. I'm planning to gather each of the topics into one comprehensive list and use that list to guide my exam note sheet. Also, I'm really looking forward to working with some of my classmates as we prepare for the exam.  I love the idea of creating practice tests and swapping them. Many times a classmate will remember a specific detail or concept that ends up appearing on the exam. The act of swapping practices tests or even reviewing exam note sheets with others helps to expand my grasp of all of the class concepts.

Thanks for reading. I hope you all have a wonderful week! For my UT classmates, hang in there --> FIVE. MORE. DAYS. :)

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JL