Final Blog

On Friday we took the third and final test, I ended up getting to class a little late due to having an interview immediately before class, but over all I don't think losing those couple of minutes affected me significantly. I thought the test was structured pretty well however I was rather surprised that there wasn't any python on the test at all. After having almost all python for the last two tests the sudden change was rather surprising, though considering we covered the refactoring example almost exclusively in Java it makes sense in hindsight. The one thing about the test I thought should've been changed was the UML questions. I feel that having two questions devoted to that portion of material was overkill.

Over all I enjoyed CS373 and felt that it was beneficial to me. Of course due to my prior experience with OOP I probably had a better idea of what to expect going into this class than others who had never taken a class with Professor Downing before. One of the most positive things about this class was simply the way in which lectures were conducted on a day to day basis. I know I've talked about this in previous blogs (particularly the early ones) but I really do feel that Professor Downing has a really unique way of lecturing, which not only brings a level of participation from students that I haven't seen in other classes but helps you remember things from lecture better. I honestly wish that all the other classes (where applicable) at UT were taught in a similar manner.

On the other hand I felt that readings were a mixed bag when it came to this class. While I did enjoy the Extreme Programming book since it was nice to see a formalized version of the agile concepts that I was exposed to over the summer I felt like the Refactoring textbook was just too difficult to get through (particularly in the early chapters where it felt like Fowler was just pointing out common sense things). This combined with the fact that we went over the refactoring examples in class for an extended period of time and weren't really quizzed over the reading kind of drained me of any motivation to read the material on my own. As for the extra readings, these were hit or miss in my opinion. While I enjoyed some and felt like they were definitely worthwhile (ex. Guerrilla Interview) there were others that I felt were a waste of time (ex. Gender Differences).

If there was one thing I would change about SWE it would be to remove the Haskell portion of the class, I just don't think it was really that useful in the long run, especially since we hardly covered it in the last third of the class and weren't even tested over it in the end. Over all hwoever I do think this class was beneficial to me, and will probably be one of the more useful ones to me once I graduate. I would definitely recommend this class to my friends.

Week #14 (11/21 - 11/25)

With class being cancelled on Wednesday and Friday there really isn't much to talk about. We got to the initial presentations on Monday and I felt that both teams did well, though the second group shot themselves in the foot with, what I assume was, slow internet due to them running out of bandwidth. Out of the two groups I think the best feature was the Team Xtreme's recommended results on misspelled searches (honestly, that's going to be tough to beat).

I'm looking forward to the rest of the presentations this week, however the final test has me feeling a bit apprehensive. I haven't really thought about it yet, but I really need to try and find a better way to study for it given my poor performance on test #2. Unfortunately it looks like all of my professors are trying to cram stuff in this week (as is the norm, sadly) so we'll see how much time I can devote to studying before Thursday night.

Week #13 (11/14 - 11/18)

So we wrapped up the final project with a wimper rather than a bang. This phase of the assignment really felt much more laid back than previous iterations to the point that instead of working on code the night before it was due, we were simply wrapping up documentation and the ilk. Looking ahead we only have the presentation left, though my group doesn't present till the last day before exam #3.

In class this week we spent time covering both singletons and reflection. Over all the material continued the trend of being interesting though I'm not sure exactly how they relate to the topic of "Software Engineering". After the lecture on Friday me and some of my classmates reflected on the fact that we had just finished the last lecture we would ever have from Prof. Downing since we will all be graduating in the spring. Looking back, I am glad that I took both this class and OOP since the concepts/topics covered were both interesting and useful, but I can't say I'll miss some of these projects.

Tomorrow is the first day of presentations, I'm interested to see how each group attempted to differentiate their creation from other groups.

Week #11 (11/7 - 11/11)

So Phase three of WC has been going a lot smoother than the previous phases in my opinion. Part of the reason for this is that for a lot of the features we've been able to find libraries that already exist and simply plug them in with minimal code. This has really sped up the process and has also allowed us to distribute and parallelize the work across the team. Over all I would say that this is definitely the least stressful out of all the WC phases.

Part of the reason that this phase is more enjoyable than other phases is the fact that it's pretty open ended. The only real requirement we had was to implement search, while everything else was left at the discretion of the team. It's nice to have that type flexibility in a cs porject since usually you're working off a specific spec provided by the instructor. In fact I think this is the first time at UT that I've had a CS programming assignment that was this open-ended.

Week #11 (10/31 - 11/04)

This past week we turned in phase 2 of World Crisis. Over all I think the process went off without any hitches. We managed to break up the work evenly enough but at the same time kept each individual subgroup informed of the over all progress of the group that when we put all the major parts together there weren't any serious problems. The third phase seems to be a lot more open ended than the previous phases, so I'm not too sure how my group will do.

We've spent a lot of time in class covering the stuff from the Refactoring textbook. While I was looking forward tot his part of the class so far the examples we've covered have felt pretty straight forward to me with almost no surprises. Hopefully we'll cover some unique solutions soon, because otherwise I'm not really sure what the point is of having an in depth discussion on the topic is. I'm also wondering how exactly we'll be tested over this material.

Week #10 (10/24 - 10/28)

This week feature more examination on the differences between the Java, Python, and Haskell programming languages. While I've been enjoying the material so far I finally realized that we only have about 5 weeks of school left and up to this point this class really hasn't been about Software Engineering. The name really doesn't aptly relate what is exactly covered in the class in my opinion.

On the project side phase 2 of World Crises is of course taking longer. Honestly I felt like converting the import/export functionality to take advantage of the datastore would have been an easy conversion, but it's definitely taken some hours to get that working, and we haven't even gotten around to the merge import yet. Overall however I think we're making good progress on this part of the project and we should finish with a decent amount of time to spare.

Week #9 (10/17 - 10/21)

Not really much to talk about this week since we took the test on Friday. Definitely don't think I did that well on the test, I felt like I got bogged down a bit on the first couple of problems which impact how much time I could spend on the later part of the exam. So yea, definitely walked out of that one with a bad feeling. Hopefully I didn't do too horribly and can bounce back on the next one.

I felt like the first part of the world crisis project wasn't too challenging with most of the hurdles having more to do with logistic (i.e. getting organized/coordinating with a big group) than actual project problems. Looking ahead I expect that to change big time. This upcoming week is also the first time we'll have reading assigned out of the Refactoring text book, hopefully it won't be too bad.

Week #8 (10/10 - 10/14)

This past week we started working on project 4. I feel like one of the toughest parts of the project will be making sure that we're using our manpower effectively. With 6 people it is easy to not coordinate well and essentially cause a drop in productivity because of that. Thankfully we seem to have split the work up well since we've made good progress on the project and it looks like we should finish with a good buffer before the deadline.

One of the difficulties when it came to allocating the work between group members was just our reletive unfamiliarity with the various technologies involved with the assignment. None of us had really had any experience with XML schemas or the Google App Engine before, so trying to assign points to each "story" was a bit difficult to do. Thankfully with 6 group members we were able to assignment people research assignments so the entire group could get a better feel as to the scope of the project.

We have a test coming up on Friday, and personally I definitely feel more nervous than I did for the last one. Part of that is due to the reading we've doing, while it's certainly less than the XP book, I feel like it's been much more dense and that I'll have to review it thoroughly. Hopefully I  do well.

Week #6 (10/03 - 10/07)

I'm looking forward to the upcoming group project, mostly because I've never had a computer science assignment that involved a group this big. I'm confident that my team should be able to work well together since we've known each other for a while and most of us have actually programed together on various assignments in other classes. However the logistics of actually coordinating 6 people does seem a tad daunting. The project also seems to be very heavy on database usage, which is a concept I don't have much background on.

The packing/unpacking material we went over in class this week was essentially a review for me, since I had taken the one hour python class before. However, even though I had seen it before, it was still a bit confusing at first glance, so it was nice that we covered it so extensively.

Recently I've noticed that I'm missing most of the reading questions when it comes to the quizzes. It looks like I'll have to change the way I'm studying the readings, specifically the online book.

Week #5 (09/26-09/30)

I don't really have much to report this week, since overall it felt rather uneventful.

On Monday we went over the basics of the Netflix project in class. At first glance it appeared to be rather daunting and I was sure that it would be much harder than the previous projects. However after getting a chance to actually work on the project, it feels much easier than what I originally anticipated. At the moment me and my partner have gotten our RMSE below 1.0 and are working on making sure it prints within the 10 minute time limit.

I missed class on Wednesday due to an interview.

The material we covered on Friday seemed like another one of those days that was almost entirely review, really didn't feel like I learned anything due from that lecture though it is nice to get an in depth review like that every now and again.

Week #4 (09/19-09/23)

I don't really have much to report this week since I was out sick on Monday and we took Test #1 on Friday. Here's just a couple of quick thoughts from the week:


- For PFD the test generator was the last thing me and my partner worked on. I honestly felt that the generator was the most difficult part of the project.

- Overall the first two projects have been fairly simply in my opinion, looking ahead I think the difficulty will ramp up for the later half of the class. Luckily I've already set myself up with a good partner/group.

- I felt that the book questions on the test were far harder than the actual programming questions. I didn't really review the readings much, since in OOP the tests tended to focus more on coding questions.

- Speaking of the test, the question concerning changing a string to an int seems to popular. I've been asked that question 3 times now, twice in interviews and once on the test. Seems like a good thing to know.

Week #3 (09/12 - 09/16)

This week we continued, we continued to review concepts such as asserts, exceptions, and memory allocation. Since I took OOP last year this stuff is still pretty fresh in my mind, though the haskell/python parts are interesting. Still I hope we move onto new material soon.

I'm also glad that we finished the Extreme Programming book this week. While I do agree with the methodology, once you accept the basic tenants of it every other aspect pretty much becomes common sense in my mind. Honestly after a while I thought the book was repetitive though there were some good messages/ideas in there.

The PFD project is extremely similar to the Tasks project in OOP so the solution didn't take that long to bang out. At the moment me and my partner have had our solution accepted by sphere, and now we have to write our tests, wiki, etc.

Week #2 (08/05 - 09/09)

I'd honestly forgotten how much I enjoyed Professor Downing's teaching style. He really keeps you on your toes since you never know just when he's going to call on you. This tends to make the class more immerse and get you more involved with readings and such, I honestly wish more professors at UT taught like this, it's a nice change of pace from when professors just get up at a podium and drone on endlessly for an hour or so.

The Collatz project should've been an easier experience for me than it was. Since I'd already completed this assignment in OOP the java program was an easy carry over, unfortunately when I ported it over to Python I made a typo that took me two very frustrating hours to spot. On one hand, while it is generally nicer to know that there isn't anything fundamentally wrong with your logic it is a rather crappy feeling to sit there and stare at a computer for an extended period of time when all that needs to be changed is a single character.

I do enjoy the XP readings we've been assigned so far. Overall I agree with the methodology and it parallels what I did last summer during my internship. I'm looking forward for the change to get back to some pair programming and testing it out.

Week #1 (08/29 - 09/02)

This is my second class that I've taken with Professor Downing (the first being OOP, which I took in Fall '10) and so far I've been enjoying it. Downing's teaching style is pretty unique, in fact I don't think I've ever taken another class though in a similar manner, it definitely makes you pay attention to what's going on at all times.

Like OOP the first project is Collatz, though this time it's coded in Java and Python as opposed to Java and C++. Most of this has been a review since I've already done this project before (even the Python stuff isn't new to me since I took a 1 hour Python course a couple of semesters ago) but it's beena  fun refresher so far. I will say that there does appear to be more documentation type requirements in SWE than in OOP.


Looking forward I'm excited for the upcoming group projects, I think I'll enjoy them and that they'll be great learning experiences.