CS371P Fall 2020 Blog 3: Mason Eastman
What did you do this past week?
This past week I attended lectures, and worked on and finished Collatz. I was able to get all the optimizations and the workflow done efficiently, which was nice. I had some other work to do this week, but it wasn’t too bad so I was able to focus on this class and project.
What’s in your way?
Nothing really! At least not for this class. I think what we’re learning is very interesting, and I enjoyed the first project because it wasn’t too challenging, but I still feel accomplished and definitely learned some new things. I’ve got two exams in other classes this week, so studying for those is a bit in my way, but I’m not too worried abot them.
What will you do next week?
Next week I’ll continue to attend lecture, and perhaps take a look/start on the next project if I have time from my exams. EGaDS is having our big Fall game Jam (think Hackathon but for making video games) this weekend, and I’m very excited for that. Needless to say I’ll try to get ahead on work if I can.
What was your experience of Collatz, the starter code, the makefile, its optimizations, and exceptions?
My experience with all of them was good. I looked at the starter code before professor Downing went over it in class, but it was nice to have him explain it; it wax easier to digest when I went back to working. The makefile got easier and easier to understand the more I used it and looked at it. The optimizations were a bit tricky at first, but after I reviewed class notes and did some planning on paper they were easy to implement. Exceptions made sense, but I might have to review my notes on the different passing types and which one is correct to use.
What made you happy this week?
My club, EGaDS, of which I am the president, had our fall kickoff meeting on Tuesday, and it was a success! We had many new and returning members in our Discord call and watching on Twitch, to hear what we’ve got in store for this virtual semester. We also had an industry professional there to impart some wisdom about the video games industry. All-in-all a great night!
What is your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My pick-of-the-week is to use the SSH extension for VSCode, if you don’t already. It allows you to log into the lab machines, and have access to a terminal, bypassing the need for PuTTY (unless you love vim, then you probably use PuTTY anyway), and you don’t have to connect to the VPN. Super useful and efficient!
