CS371P Fall 2020 Blog 13: Mason Eastman

What did you do this past week?

This past week I was really busy; I went to lectures, and got most of the project done. I had an incredibly long and difficult vector calculus take home exam, so that’s what I spent the vast majority of my week working on.

What’s in your way?

Currently, my partner and I have a completely correct solution that passes all the student tests, but each of the HackerRank competitions time-out on the final test. Hopefully we can find what’s causing our code to be inefficient and optimize it so that those final tests don’t time-out.

What will you do next week?

Next week I plan on enjoying the break and being at home. We’re not having any extended family come in, nor are we going anywhere, so the time to chill will be nice. My partner and I will finish this project and I’ll go to my classes, but after all that I’ll be going for gold camos in the new Call of Duty while enjoying some turkey!

If you read it, what did you think of What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You?

I thought it was a sad, but important piece of writing. Once again I am embarrassed for our society and workplaces in that we still haven’t made sure that everyone has the same opportunities and are treated equally. The blog pointed out the importance of networking over personal merit, which I hope shifts to be the other way around.

What was your experience of inheritance?

I’ve used inheritance before (most notably in Java), but I really liked the way C++ does it. It feels more natural to me, and more flexible since you have the power of multiple parents and specific “super” constructors for each, the virtual keyword, and other pieces of functionality that can lead to clean and efficient design.

What made you happy this week?

Coming home and seeing my family!

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

My tip of the week is to look more at makefiles. I haven’t really used them before this class, but I’ve always been intrigued by them, and now that I have had to edit/write my own, I’ve found that they’re super powerful and useful, and I’ll definitely try to start using them in more of my side-projects if I can.