CS313e Fall 2014: Jewel Langevine
My adventures as I delve deeper into object-oriented software design.
Hello there!
This past week in CS 313E, I came across a great quote and several interesting facts that I would like to share! "Don't stress about graduating on-time, graduate well." This was on Monday, September 15th, as Professor Downing encouraged the class to attend the Engineering and Natural Sciences career fairs. An 'exception' in Python is a type of class and it is the parent of 'ValueError' and 'KeyError'. I'm not too sure how useful this will be for assignments but I know it will definitely be useful when studying for the exams! If we see 'assert False' in Professor Downing's code, it means the code never reaches that point & we have to figure out why. I can definitely see myself centering my exam study strategy on this. A type is a type. OOOOH! That's so cool to think about! Think about it.... :) --From the Bloomberg In-Class Talk-- There are so many tools out there that support and enhance software design and engineering. These include Emacs as a code editor and Doxygen for documentation. I wonder how many is too many after a while. How do software engineers manage these tools? Hortonworks partnered with Bloomberg. Their partnership is especially interesting to me because Hortonworks is a member company of the organization I currently work for! Some Bloomberg employees participate in FIRST Robotics Mentoring. I was on a FIRST Robotics team in high school! Team 118 will always have a special place in my heart! :) -- I'm glad I was able to share my week in CS 313E with you! Comment and let me know if you found any of these facts particularly interesting! Thanks for reading, JL
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Yay! The first CS 313E project of the semester has been submitted!
It was definitely a learning experience to say the least. Working on Collatz helped to solidify the following two lessons for me: Lesson 1: Piazza and Study Buddies are Crucial If you read my post from last week, you already know how I feel about Piazza. I love it! It's usefulness really came into fruition with this first assignment. With a simple search I found discussions and questions based on the same issues I was facing. The Piazza posts were also really helpful in finding a study buddy. As Professor Downing continually stresses, our success in this class is a function of how proactive we are in reaching out for help when necessary and offering help when possible. I'm really happy that I found a classmate to work with during the Collatz storm. I was able to explain bits of the instructions she was not clear on and she helped to refresh my memory on Python and git commands. Speaking of git.... Lesson 2: Git and GitHub are Crucial Where have these tools been all my life?! Seriously, it was so helpful to have a log of the changes I made to my code and to be able to 'revert' back to a previous version when a bright idea turned out not so bright in the end. These tools enhance what Software Development is all about: trial and error. Before I knew about these tools (i.e. before Professor Downing's class), I would have to save several copies of my code as I changed it to prevent disastrous events such as a compilation failure due to a syntax error or the blue screen of death. Thankfully, git and GitHub are like software versions of me that create copies of code for safe keeping. Ahh, Project 1 has been submitted and it's time to move on to Project 2. Be sure to come back next week to see how things go! Thanks for reading, --JL This past week in CS 313E has been great! We spent the majority of the time discussing Collatz, our first of five projects.
Our class is turning out to be really interactive. Professor Downing designed the class in a way that basically forces us to meet and work with our classmates. For me, that's great - I love meeting new people! One of the tools we use to collaborate with our classmates is Piazza. We can use Piazza to ask any question related to the course material and assignments. Extra credit points can be earned by viewing the majority of the posts and writing instructor-endorsed comments for questions asked by other students. Extra credit points aside, Piazza is a useful tool. One of my favorite aspects of Piazza is the option to have a daily digest email sent to your inbox summarizing the activity for each of the classes you have enrolled in. While email can sometimes be annoying, I find this digest email so valuable and necessary for my success in the class. In addition to helping me stay updated with the class and class discussions, the digest email helps to keep CS 313E at the top of my mind. My only grumble with Piazza is that their mobile app is currently only available on the App Store. Piazza, please come to Google Play! I really want to replace the emails with push notifications! Before, I leave to work some more on Collatz, I just want to share my favorite topic from class this week: HTML file production from Python documentation. I'll see y'all again next week! Thanks for reading! JL First things first, please excuse the generic title.
"Week" one of Fall 2014 classes at The University of Texas at Austin are over! While Wednesday through Friday isn't really a full week, it definitely feels like it. My classes all started with a sprint, especially CS 313E. I am indeed a Biomedical Engineering student so it might seem strange that I am completing the Elements of Computing Certificate since I already utilize and sharpen my software design skills with various programming and computing languages learned in my major classes. However, to me, it makes perfect sense! Why not learn one or two more? Why not learn Python? Regardless of whether or not I want to pursue a software engineering role after graduation, being skilled at programming (and having the mindset behind it) is invaluable for success in a software company. My Professor made it very clear on the first day that he wants us to truly understand object-oriented software design so that we can actually implement it in our future jobs. Professor Downing even went as far as posting important dates for recruiting events on our class calendar. I really appreciate this type of teaching approach. It puts students' success as a top priority. As a graduating senior student, my aim is to jump at opportunities to strengthen my attractiveness as a job candidate. Those important dates are definitely on my calendar! One of the main ways CS 313E helps us to better prepare ourselves for a career in software design is through the creation and/or maintenance of a GitHub repository. I've heard of GitHub before and I'm excited to gain practical exposure to its usefulness! Stay tuned for another post next week! JL |
AuthorThanks for visiting my blog! Born in Guyana, bred in The Bahamas, and maturing in Texas, it's easy to say that I've had many interesting and unique life experiences. Blogging is my chance to share them! Archives
December 2014
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