CS373 Fall 2021 Blog 11: Mason Eastman
What did you do this week?
This week I attended lectures, did the quizzes/exercises, and met with my team more to discuss Phase 3. I had a big project in Game Programming Paradigms due Wednesday, and another due in Information Retrieval tomorrow, so I haven’t had the chance to look at my tasks for Phase 3 as much as I’d like, but I’m not worried about the time at all. I also went to a UT-GDAD career/networking fair to talk with people from some game-development studios!
What’s in your way?
Nothing currently! I’m close to wrapping up my project due tomorrow night, then I’ll spend the bulk of the week working on my part of Phase 3, and helping my teammates if they need.
What will you do next week?
Next week I’ll go to lectures, take all the quizzes, and get my part of Phase 3 done. I don’t have anything due next week other than tomorrow night, so I won’t be worrying about deadlines for other classes just yet. Shouldn’t be a super stressful week. We also have an EGaDS general meeting/speaker night on Tuesday, and I’m really excited for it because we have two developers from Bethesda Game Studios Austin coming to talk!
If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #11: Getters and Setters?
I thought it was very informative and challenged some of the things were were taught in our early days of programming about instance variables and their accessors. I really liked the index card exercise, and I would like to try incorporating something similar in my planning for future projects.
What was your experience of relational algebra, select, and project?
Relational algebra was a new term to me, but it very quickly made sense. Likewise, while I have no formal experience in SQL, I’ve been exposed to the SELECT-WHERE notation, so adapting that to the select method we wrote wasn’t difficult; project took a bit longer for me to wrap my head around, but the exercise was great to get some practice with it.
What made you happy this week?
We assigned Junior Officers shadow positions in EGaDS this week, and one of them was really interested in shadowing me! While I don’t always do the flashy, front-facing work that other officers do (though as president I am always directly responsible for them), it made me really happy that a underclassman regular in the club I’m friends with was so interested in learning what I do and passionate about helping out! Makes me excited for the future of the club.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My tip-of-the-week is to find something you can do for a short break! For example, every 30–40 minutes or so of coding I’ll take a short break to sit at the piano and play a couple things or work on a piece I’m learning. It really helps to break up the monotony of being by a screen all the time, and I am comfortable with taking more frequent breaks since I know I won’t get sucked in for an extend period of time, which I’d run the risk of doing if I decided to play some video games instead. Finding something you enjoy that you can do to clear your head without losing a ton of time is something I’d recommend.
