What did you do this past week?

This week in class we expanded on the idea of software contracts. We did so by reviewing iterators, lambdas, the allof function, the range iterator function, defining operations for user defined types, and the meaning of friendship. :) Although my courses are demanding, I appreciate how it keeps me staying social with my classmates. Talking with other students about concepts we learn in class definitely takes away some of the stress. I also stayed pretty busy in my Graphics course, wrapping up on an assignment, which took up the bulk of my time.

What’s in your way?

Staying focused. Despite not taking a full semester, I’m a bit overwhelmed by the work that needs to be accomplished by Friday. What we’ve learned in OOP the past two weeks will need a lot of reviewing for me to feel fully prepared for my exam on Thursday. I’m struggling on a task at work that is also stressing me out! I switched from a 40 hr week this summer to a 10 hr week and I feel like I’m moving so slowly!

What will you do next week?

Study and get an early start on my next Graphics assignment! I also hope to make good progress on a task at work. I keep facing the challenge of deciding whether or not it is a good idea to re-invent the wheel (which I always believed to be bad practice) or use / alter code which could affect other code outside the scope of my task. This has been my biggest challenge as a programmer it seems.

Tip of the Week

Good luck studying for the exam! Even though I’ve never taken an exam for this class, I recommend making notecards for the terms and ideas you are most uncomfortable with, and most importantly I recommend actually coding and taking notes on what your code does and whether or not it met your expectations. I think this is one of the best ways to learn, because you can then associate how code should work with how you originally thought it would work and ultimately have a deeper understanding of the ‘why’ something is how it is and isn’t how it isn’t. Ha, I hope that makes sense. I plan on doing this with pointers and other concepts we reviewed in class.