CS371p Spring 2020: Ian Thorne (Post 14)
What did you do this past week?
This past week was relatively relaxed for me. I didn’t have much in the way of big projects outside of the fifth project for my graphics class. Fortunately, after much trial and error, my partner and I finally finished the project off. After hours of debugging and questioning whether we ever understood anything at all — it turned out we were just multiplying two matrices in the wrong order. Changing that fixed everything. Literally everything.
What’s in your way?
This week, I’m going to be very busy. Between finishing off the Life project for this class, the test for this class, tests in Spanish and Algorithms, and my final AET project, I’ll be very busy this week. I’ll need to make sure I really get to work and can stay focused, which has definitely been a challenge in the past few weeks. I think if I can really get down to business, though, I should be able to make it through this week alright.
What will you do next week?
This week, I’ll be doing everything that I listed out above. I’m a little over halfway done with Life at this point, which is way further along than I’ve been on the other projects and I’m feeling pretty confident about the test for this class, so I don’t think either of those will go very poorly. As far as my Spanish test, I’m pretty confident that I’ll be good there too, so I’ll be spending most of this week trying to catch up for my Algorithm’s test and working on my final AET project.
What was your experience of virtual, pure virtual, and smart pointers?
I had been introduced to the difference between virtual and pure virtual methods in the one hour C++ class, as well as in Dr. Gheith’s Operating Systems class, but neither class went as in-depth about them as we did this week. I’m really glad to have learned so much about them, though, because I’ve always found C++’s inheritance to be rather confusing. It’s still a little difficult, but it’s definitely starting to make a lot more sense. As far as smart pointers, I was also introduced to those in Dr. Gheith’s class, he talked about how a shared pointer could be implemented one day and (somehow) I remembered what he said about it.
What made you happy this week?
This week, finally (FINALLY) finishing off the fifth graphics project made me really happy. Our professor decided to roll the fourth project into the fifth to give the class an extension, because most people were pretty far behind. My partner and I had been struggling on those two projects for about three weeks and finally getting them working was so satisfying.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
Again, I don’t really have any software development related picks, so it looks like you’re getting another album suggestion! This week, I’m recommending “Daytona” by Pusha T. Another one of the Wyoming Tapes which Kanye West had a big part in during the summer of 2018, this album clocks in at just over twenty minutes of runtime. While it might not be saying anything particularly deep, this record embodies gangster rap, with each song being filled to the brim with clever wordplay and double entendres. The whole thing flows together so nicely that it really just feels like a twenty minute song. If you’re looking for something new, I’d definitely check it out!
