SWE Be Bloggin’ 3

What did you do this past week?

I kept busy. Went grocery shopping last weekend with a friend, hung out for a bit, cooked some, attended classes, did homework, tutored, made a friend, went out for a stroll, explored the area around my apartment, got some new furniture from IKEA, did some interviews, and tried and failed to fight a cockroach.

What’s in your way?

The cockroach is definitely in my way of living peacefully in my apartment, but fortunately, my roommate’s the one who actually has to put up with it. In all seriousness, avoiding distractions is my primary obstacle at the moment. I’ve been pretty motivated since getting back to Austin, but these past few days, I’ve been wasting a little bit of time on YouTube despite me knowing that I don’t really have the time to do that.

What will you do next week?

I’ll continue to stay busy. Study with my new friend, study with some old friends, catch up on lectures and assignments I’ve been putting off, finish Project 1 from this class, do some more interviews, and apply to about 50 companies.

What was your experience of Collatz, the starter code, the makefile, its optimizations, and exceptions?

It’s an interesting project, and thanks to it I now have a much more solid understanding of the software development process. As of the moment that I’m typing this, I’m working on the meta-caching part. Conceptually, all of the optimizations make sense and are easy to implement, but when put in practice, understanding what all the different parts (make run, make test, HackerRank, GitLab CI) are telling can be a bit overwhelming, but I do still feel like I have it all handled.

What made you happy this week?

I made a new friend from the other side of the world, so that’s pretty dope. My roommate made me two sandwiches from a Cubano pork shoulder that he’d marinated for 24 hours and then roasted for 2.5. That was heavenly. And I also reached out and a nice chat with an old and close friend, which was a big spirit lifter.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

The company I tutor for formerly used an online coding platform called repl.it. It’s pretty intuitive and free; if you need a quick place to write some code and test a few things/get some practice, I’d recommend using it.