CS 373 Final Entry

For future/incoming students:

Work

The project is the primary time-consumer; at my busiest, I was working 30–40 hrs in one week. Don’t sweat too much though; that will only be for about 1 or 2 weeks. After the 3rd project, things get much easier to manage.

Exams

Tips

  • Go to the lab/office hours early in each project to clarify the project requirements
  • Find a good group to work with. If you have friends you work well with, form a group with them. This can be what makes or breaks your semester. If possible, try to become friends with teammates.
  • Learn Git etiquette early
  • Google, StackOverflow/Exchange, and documentation are going to be your best friends
  • When coming up with a project, try to get an idea that you’d be interested in working on. Put in the effort ahead of time to make a great idea so that the specifications of later projects won’t come back to bite you.
  • Keep track of some good tips (life, software, etc.) around somewhere. Try to get at least 10 of them.
  • In each project, plan out a development schedule. This will help keep things on track.

For my grade:

Course Takeaways:

  • test first, test during, test after, test, test, test
  • when designing algorithms, demand the weakest capabilities (e.g. iterable vs. indexable)
  • when designing containers, provide the strongest capabilities (e.g. indexable vs iterable)
  • build decorators on top of containers, iterators, and functions
  • utilize the benefits of being lazy (i.e. yield)
  • always look for reuse and symmetry in your code
  • collaboration is essential to the quality of your code and to your well-being in producing it

How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?

Were there any other particular takeaways for you?

How did you feel about two-stage quizzes and tests?

How did you feel about cold calling?

How did you feel about office hours?

How did you feel about lab sessions?

Give me your suggestions for improving the course.

--

--

Get the Medium app

A button that says 'Download on the App Store', and if clicked it will lead you to the iOS App store
A button that says 'Get it on, Google Play', and if clicked it will lead you to the Google Play store