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.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, November 14, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, October 17, 2011
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.
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.
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