CS371p Spring 2021: Final Entry
How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?
I think that the course followed the takeaways very well. I felt like each topic covered in the course was well thought out and planned with our exercises and projects so that during the week I could learn about a topic, then on the weekend, I would work on applying those topics. For me, this is the best way that I learn because I need to be able to see the topic then apply the topic to really understand what I’m doing.
Were there any other particular takeaways for you?
I think another takeaway I had was the importance of committing your code frequently. By doing so, you ensure that if you make a mistake and you need to go back, it’s easy to do so. I found that a lot of times it was useful to commit my code after I made a small milestone so that if I wrote more code that then broke something, I could go back, or even just compare with code that I know worked.
How did you feel about cold calling?
Cold calling made me very nervous. I was worried that I would be called on when we were talking about a topic that I didn’t understand. However, Professor Downing was very kind whenever you did not know the answer. Instead of making you feel dumb, he made it feel more like a conversation. Whenever you didn’t know something he would always reassure you that it was okay not to know the answer.
How did you feel about office hours?
I only went to office hours once, but the time I did I found them very helpful. I liked the option to show my code to someone else to try and help me problem solve it because sometimes I found that I had been working on something for too long so that the problem was just overlooking it.
How did you feel about lab sessions?
I found them as helpful as office hours.
What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?
I had used hackerrank in the past for interviews, but I appreciated being able to work in hackerrank more so that I could gain more familiarity with it. I know it will defiantly be useful to me in the future.
You should have read five papers that describe SOLID design: Single responsibility, Open-closed principle, Liskov substitution, Interface segregation, Dependency inversion. What insights have they given you?
I learned a lot about object-oriented programming through these papers. I found that they helped me understand a lot about what goes into object-oriented programming, and also get rid of some misconceptions that I had about object-oriented programming.
You should have read two papers that advised minimizing getters and setters. What insights have they given you?
Before this class, I assumed that getters and setters were part of object-oriented programming, but now I understand that minimizing them is very useful because if you need to change how something is implemented you no longer need to make as many changes to other classes.
Give me your suggestions for improving the course.
I thought that the course was great. I loved that there was a mix between quizzes that had real questions and attendance quizzes because there were times that I did poorly so the attendance ones help to boost my grade. Additionally, I appreciate how flexible you have been with assignment deadlines. The only negative for me was the excercisez. As an introvert, I found it hard to spread up and there were often times where our breakout room was silent until someone decided to break the silence and for me, that was very uncomfortable. I understand the necessity, but it’s hard from a virtual environment to feel open to talking to strangers when it is much easier to hide behind a screen. One thing I liked about another of my classes is that for the whole semester, we had the same group of people that we worked with so it was easier to get things done. If we could do something like that, or even for a few weeks have the same group, I know introverted people like me would really appreciate it.