CS373 Spring 2021: Ian Thorne (Week 8)

What did you do this past week?

Aside from eagerly await the beginning of spring break, I attended a couple of (virtual) networking events and worked on the various assignments I had to complete before the break began. The College of Natural Science’s virtual career fair was on Tuesday, so I spent a bit of time Tuesday chatting with representatives from the companies that seemed the most interesting to me. UT’s Game Design and Development program also held a virtual networking event on Thursday, where I had the chance to meet with people from some of the game studios in and around Austin. Here’s hoping I can get an opportunity at one of them!

What’s in your way?

For this upcoming week, the fact that it’s technically a “break” is in my way. I alluded above to the assignments that I needed to complete before the break began, but I neglected to mention the three other projects that a majority of my break’s time will be spent on. Since I’m very much in the market for a good break, making sure I make the time to get my work done is the main thing in my way.

What will you do next week?

This week, I’ll hopefully actually take the time to have a proper break, relax, and play some games. My backlog of games to play just keeps getting longer, so hopefully I’ll be able to make some headway this week. I’m also hoping to get the chance to do something with my friends, even if it’s just virtual. Aside from that stuff, though, I’ll need to work on the second phase of the web project for this class, the pre-alpha version of my game development capstone group’s game, and a game that I’m working on as a research project.

If you read it, what did you think of the Liskov Substitution Principle?

I thought it made a lot of sense. Again, I kind of remember reading it in Object-Oriented Programming, but like the Open-Closed Principle, it’s good to revisit after about a year. I’ve had a lot more experience with breaking both principles in the last year, so the benefits of abiding by them are much more apparent. Sometimes when I’m working on projects andI have to make changes like some of the bad examples laid out in the article, I get the sense that the way I’ve built my solution isn’t ideal, but I always struggle to put that sense into words. Both the Liskov Substitution Principle and the Open-Closed Principle provide explanations for that sense and will hopefully help me avoid it going forward. You know, after I forget to follow them a few more times…

What was your experience of iteration, comprehensions, generators, and digits iterator?

I thought they were all pretty clear. We’ve talked about iteration a lot in class at this point, so it’s become incredibly clear. Because of that, both generators and the digits iterator made a lot of sense, as well. I’ve heard the term “generator” before but I’d never fully understood what it was. Understanding it to be somewhat of a lazy iterator really makes a lot of sense. Finally, I’d used comprehensions in Python before, but I never knew that name, nor how they really worked under the hood, so that was good to learn as well.

What made you happy this week?

This week, the Game Design and Development networking event was a pretty cool experience. I attended the last in-person one (to my knowledge) two years ago and left feeling a little disappointed, but I felt like this one went much better (practice makes perfect, and all that). I had the chance to speak to representatives from five companies in Texas and I think I had pretty good conversations with each of them. Hopefully, I’ll be able to secure an opportunity with one of them, but even if I can’t, I feel like I made connections with some good people to know — so it was already a win!

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

This week, my (un)lucky reader, I again don’t have any real software picks or tips for you. What I do have, however, is an album recommendation: AM, by Arctic Monkeys. AM is an album that was released in 2013, clocking in at just over forty minutes of run-time. It’s got a great mix of styles and some stand-out songs that can absolutely get stuck in your head. That said, pretty much every track on the album is a winner, and there’s a good enough variety of sound in each song that it’s an engaging listen throughout. If you’re into music that tries to mix pop with other genres, it’s certainly worth a listen!