Week 2

Project:
With Project 1: Collatz out of the way I'm feeling pretty good. I managed to rank 6th in the class on leader times for the problem on the sphere ranking page. I would have tried to cut down my time even more and perhaps even tried to get the extra credit for the collatz v2 problem but alas being in both classes means you have to proportion your time appropriately. Collatz proved to be a great learning experience in terms of templates. I am absolutely in love with the way the professor broke down the templates to help us adhere to good software engineering ideas like TDD (Test Driven Development) and setting up a run harness. My Netflix partner Angela Hsu and I have been working hard this past week applying the same principles to the Netflix challenge that is due this upcoming Thursday. When the professor revealed the problem on Thursday I must admit I felt a little overwhelmed but after spending the past few days grinding away at the keyboard kicking out caches I feel comfortable that my partner and I will come away with a really good grade.

Class:
We are now digging deeper into the intricacies of Python as we learn about the different types the language supports. We finished up last week discussing various ways to make loops faster which was very useful for me since I spent this past weekend making caches for the Netflix project. I am very curious to see how the next week plays out and more importantly whats on the agenda in terms of the bigger group project. I made a dynamic website last year and it seemed very involved with multiple technologies and languages which makes me a little worried as to how involved this project will be. The quizzes seem to be getting progressively more difficult as time goes on.

General study tips continue as follows:

1) Print off the class slides (he updates them usually the night before) to take notes on... trust me, the exam will be a longer version of the quizzes

2) Do the readings... focus on the key ideas, they show up as easy points on the exam

3) START EARLY ON THE PROJECT