CS371p Fall 2021: Xuefei Zhao
2 min readSep 4, 2021
- What did you do this past week?
This past week my classes officially begin. Some of my classes only provide in-person options, some only provide online options, and others provide both in-person and online options. So I’m trying to figure out how to arrange my schedule and the best way to learn under this special circumstance. As for OOP, I attended the lectures and started working on Collatz. - What’s in your way?
On the one hand, I want to go back to normal classes to have a better learning experience. But on the other hand, I am worried about the covid cases on campus. One of my friends tested positive for covid, and many students back to campus do not wear masks, so I don’t feel safe going back there. - What will you do next week?
Most of my classes’ first assignment/project is out. I plan to start working on the projects next week. For this class, I already finished the setup of Collatz, and I plan to start implementing the simplest solution this long weekend and optimize my solution next week. - If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #2: Makefile?
I used Makefile in almost every class’s projects, so I’m quite familiar with the structure of the file. However, the Makefile has many tools I’m not familiar with. Thanks to the author’s comment, I understand how to use the commands. I’m sure this Makefile will be very helpful for completing the Collatz project. - What was your experience of assertions, unit tests, and coverage?
I had SWE with professor Downing last semester, so the concept are still fresh to me. I wrote and used assertions and unit tests quite often in my SWE project, and I used coverage tests a lot during my internship experience the past summer. Sometimes updating a piece of code makes previously passed tests fail, and the testings are very useful in capturing the mistakes. - What made you happy this week?
I am in Houston now to enjoy the long weekend. - What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
Many people use git or other version control tools only when collaborating with others. However, I believe the version control tools are also very useful when working on a project individually. I usually commit whenever I have something working. Thus, when I mess up with something I can easily go back to the previous commit and start over from there. In addition, I often check out to another branch to do some experiments so I don’t need to worry about messing up the project at all.
