This upcoming week my partner and I will wrap up Life. I could use some more time before getting back into coursework and dealing with the stress of the last weeks of the semester. ObstaclesĮven though we had several days off I still feel like I could use a break. Before the break my partner and I pretty much wrapped up Life, which made the break stress-free since I didn’t have to worry about the project. I had a nice break from school last week due to Thanksgiving. Gotta clean up that memory (forgive the rage comic format) If you ever want to feel like this guy, then try typing away on this website: (try using the number keys on your keyboard too) Laugh of the Week Thank you for a great semester, Professor Downing!! Tip of the Week (not really) Overall this was a really fun and interesting class. I hope I walk away from the upcoming test feeling the same way! The HackerRank portion felt like a more formal version of when we’ve been asked to implement some functionality in class, so again it wasn’t too shocking. The Canvas portion very closely mimicked the daily quizzes we had in class, so it wasn’t too much of a shocker. I thought it was interesting to have an online test. So far we’ve only had one test in OOP, which has been nice because I haven’t had to stress about exams for this class too much. This kept me up to date on what we’d learned and made sure that I was on the right page for the upcoming lecture. The daily quizzes helped me because they forced me to review the material covered in the previous class. I like that we were able to work with partners on the projects – I find that pair programming is more fun and more useful in learning new concepts. I still think I need more practice to be a confident C++ programmer, but the projects helped me start that journey. In particular Darwin and Life made me feel like I was starting to grasp C++ more. The projects in this class were challenging and definitely made me face C++ head on.
Though I would’ve preferred it if blogs were still extra credit and not mandatory. The blogs were an interesting recap of the week, so I enjoyed them. I suppose that with more experience it would become second nature, so probably what I need is just more practice. I appreciate that C++ gives you so much control, but I think it can complicate the problem solving process. It’s given me a deeper appreciation for what Java handles for me. When I write in C++ I think about what the analagous statement might be in Java, and how it must mean that Java is using a pointer under the hood in this one instance or a reference in another. Walking away from OOP I feel that I’ve learned a lot about a lower level take on object oriented programming (so I guess there is some OOP actually, just not explicitly talked about). That being said this is a great class and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting class to take. My first comment is that OOP should be renamed because it’s really more of a class about C++ than about object oriented programming.