Week 6

• What did you do this past week?

I wrapped up Voting with a partner. I did not plan on working with someone for this assignment, however, it definitely made life easier having someone to rely on and also ensure we met our requirements. We were able to wrap up the hackerrank part pretty easily, but had some difficulty in getting our merge request approved – classic Windows vs Linux issue with the newline at the end of file. Regardless, working with someone was a better experience and I appreciate Professor Downing’s emphasis on this with the bonus points. I will look to work with a partner for each of the following assignments.

We also covered the concepts of containers, container adapters and iterators. As usual, I enjoyed Professor Downing’s lectures, I always come out of it feeling like I learned something. His style of teaching is engaging and it shows that he cares about the experience his students have. Having taken SWE in the past, he is definitely one of my favorite Professors in the C S department.

• What’s in your way?

Exams and recruiting. This is recruiting season, and having to manage school work with technical interviews is quite challenging. I do not want my course performance to suffer, and therefore have a few sleepless nights ahead with the first round of exams to follow soon along with many interviews. I also need to get back into the gym – packing on some weight to add to the already added holiday weight …

• What will you do next week?

I will work on prepping for tech interviews, applying to more jobs and studying for exams. I have a paper due end of this week as well. A busy week, and hopefully I can make time for a couple visits to the gym.

• What was your experience of containers, container adapters and iterators? (this question will vary, week to week)

I enjoyed learning about the concept of backing containers. We are getting into the thick of true C++ knowledge, and I appreciate the bottom ups approach Professor Downing has taken. It helps us better appreciate how the language works under the hood. It is cool to know why the default container for a specific data structure is a deque, list or vector.

I knew a lot about iterators from SWE, so there was nothing new there – but I appreciate the hackerrank exercises to practice our understanding.

• What made you happy this week?

My girlfriend and I discovered how to make perfect omelette – definitely made us happy this weekend.

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

I know this is not a python class, but for those looking to code in python – I suggest pycharm. The professional version is free for students. A must use for python coders.