What did you do this past week?

I missed out on Monday this week due to getting sick over the weekend, and unfortunately it was a lesson on a topic I am not too comfortable with - iterators & templates. On Wednesday, we had a speaker come in from JPL to give a basic talk on software engineering. In particular, I enjoyed his discussion of solution brainstorming. I’m typically a quiet person, so I admire that his team tries to hear, or see in sticky note form, all ideas as equally as possible rather than just listening to the loudest person in the room. I think this allows for diverse ideas and puts solving the problem well as the primary focus instead of solving the problem fast.

On Friday, we returned to our discussion on iterators and templates. I got a little lost during this lecture due to not studying up on what I missed on Monday, but I was able to catch on somewhat towards the end of the class. Putting time into catching up this week for sure.

The Netflix assignment wasn’t too bad! I like to believe I am capable of following instructions, but honestly I struggled to get all the requirements in for the first assignment! The Netflix assignment I believe was a bit more manageable, even though ultimately our integration build broke after submitting the project. Having a partner for this assignment was really nice! Not only did it give our grade a little bit of a cushion, but more importantly it allowed us to bounce ideas off of each other and come up with a decent solution to the problem.

What’s in your way?

GRAPHICS. Ha. I enjoy what I am learning in graphics but this ray tracing assignment is getting the best of me. After turning in my graphics assignment, I’ll be able to focus on my classes equally, study hard for OOP, and start my assignments at decent times.

Also, in terms of this class, I worry that my schedule will complicate work I do with partners in the future. I typically work MWs until the evening and (preferably) do not like to return to campus afterwards. Of course though, I’ll do what I need to in order to get the work done!

What will you do next week?

Finish my project. Rest, and begin studying for our exam coming up!

Tip of the Week

A speaker who visited our class recently mentioned that they used JIRA to track issues in their development process. Even though in this class we use Github issues to track, I highly recommend using JIRA if you and a team are about to take on a large project! (It probably is more complex that necessary for school projects, but good to keep in mind!)

One of my favorite things about JIRA is the work logging. Often I’m thrown into a giant code base that I am unfamiliar with and have to absorb how it’s designed, what’s relevant to me, and the order of the calls being made in the code, and work logging helps me manage doing all of that. Whenever I do work on a task, I log the number of hours I spent and describe the work I did in pretty heavy detail because I don’t know who could look that the work I did in the future or if the next day I need a refresher. It keeps me focused and organized! So, I recommend!