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.