CS313e Fall 2014: Jewel Langevine
My adventures as I delve deeper into object-oriented software design.
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. :) -- JL
0 Comments
Hey y'all! This past week has been quite eventful for our class. We started off the week finding out that Professor Downing (PD)'s class website had been hacked. My first question was "why?". The website was full of Python code that would probably be of no use to someone who already knows how to hack a website (-_-). Maybe it was a joke but we're so far into the semester that little hick-ups like that aren't funny anymore.
Thankfully, PD was able to create a new class website using GitHub. Since he had his original code on GitHub anyway, I'm assuming it was a much smoother transition than if he had to rebuild the site using another website generator/host. I think it's really nice that GitHub has such a feature. Specifically called 'GitHub Pages', the feature allows users to 'host websites directly from their GitHub repos'. Learn more here: GitHub Pages and GitHub Pages Basics. As far as class content goes, this week we were introduced to our fifth and final project, discussed Python class inheritance, and touched on binary search. I'm excited for this fifth project. The algorithm set-up is very similar to the previous project but the interface will differ a bit since we are allowed to use class inheritance. I haven't found a partner as yet but I'm really looking forward to working with one! Test 2 is 17 days away! I had to double-check my math on that. Seventeen days y'all. SEVEN-TEEN. Six quizzes, one project, one exam, and seventeen days until CS 313E will be over! It's a bittersweet thing to think about...atleast for me. -- JL Y'all. We only have about 3.5 weeks of classes left!
I'm here to report on my awesome pair programming experience. Though we had a shorter period of time for Project 4, I really liked the assignment. It was fun to work with my partner and think through each step of the project before we began writing any code. My favorite aspect of this experience was having unit tests written as the main code was being developed. In Project 3, I really honed in on writing unit tests for Python classes. It was fun but frustrating because my partner and I waited until our code was fully functional before writing the unit tests. Despite the frustration, in the end we were able to achieve 99% coverage! This time around, writing the unit tests during the code development process proved to be so much more efficient. We were able to perfect each major code segment and thoroughly test it before moving on. It was great and once we were done writing code for assignment functionality, we realized that we were also done writing testing code. The cherry on the top? We achieved 91% coverage! At the beginning of the semester we were introduced to "coverage" and I wasn't too sure what it meant or why it is so significant in software design. In short, your % coverage shows how well you tested your code. The higher the percentage, the better! A tip on getting higher coverage is to test methods or functions that call other methods or functions. The calls require your tests to check several sections of your code at once thereby increasing your coverage without writing too many unit tests! Have a wonderful week friends! -- JL This week we finished up our discussion of Python Data Structures and we were introduced to Project 4 and it necessitates more usage and a deeper understanding of classes. I'm so very happy that I setup my partner situation much earlier this time around. Working with project partners has been a great experience for me in general and especially in this class.
In our data structure lectures and quizzes, I've noticed a very specific trend in Professor Downing's approach. He will introduce the concept, write code, give us about 10 minutes in class to write more pieces of code, and quiz us the next class period by asking us to write more code. The quizzes aren't your typical "regurgitate this and regurgitate that" type of assessment. Instead, we must understand the concept enough to know how to manipulate the code. Thinking all the way back to Exam 1, I can say this method of testing should basically be expected if you (my wonderful reader) decide to take a course with Professor Downing. Absolutely do not expect to be asked to simply re-write what you go over in class. It's essential that you (we) internalize the class concepts to a point where we can take it to next level when asked to on quizzes and exams. Exam 2 will be so much "fun".... (sigh) :) Next up: a look at recursion! It's amazing to think that there are less than five weeks and only one project left! Thanks for reading! -- 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
Categories |
© 2024 Jewel Langevine. All Rights Reserved.
|