CS371g Summer 2021: Shaharyar Lakhani — Week 3

Hey there, and welcome to week 3 of my Generic Programming blog!

What did you do this past week?

This past week, I reviewed content from class and I read the description of the upcoming Netflix project. I was also focusing on my internship, so it was an overall pretty busy week.

What’s in your way?

Not much is in my way. I wish I started the Netflix project earlier, but I just didn’t have time to. Since father’s day is this weekend, I have been out with my family and my grandparents. However, I hope to start the project to day and get as much as I can done before the week starts.

What will you do next week?

The main 3 goals that I have this summer are my internship, this class, and health, so next week I will be focusing mainly on those. For class, I will try to get the Netflix project done ahead of time. For my internship, we should be getting our project early this week, so I will start working on that. As for health, I am trying to eat right and play basketball.

If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #3: Pair Programming?

I think pair programming is extremely important. One thing specifically that stood out to me is when the article stated that pair programming gets developers out of their comfort zones and makes them socialize. I think that currently, this is a big problem for people in tech. They are extremely intelligent and hard working, but their social skills aren’t always that great from what I have seen. I think communication is equally as important as coding.

What was your experience of value vs. pointer vs. reference, and Incr? (this question will vary, week to week)

I think the topics were explained incredibly well. I have some experience with C++, and while pointers, values, and references aren’t new to me, they were always a bit confusing. The lecture cleared a lot of the confusion up, and I can see why C++ can be such a useful language because of the way these values can be used.

What was your experience of Boost Serialization and RMSE? (this question will vary, week to week)

I once again thought these topics were explained well. Additionally, I think they will help greatly with the project. Sometimes, due to the length of the lecture, I unintentionally zone out, but I think when I watch this lecture again I will be comfortable with the topics.

What made you happy this week?

I was happy that I got to spend time with my Grandpa for fathers day yesterday. We went over and brought him his favorite dessert, pistachio ice cream, and just sat and talked to him for a while. I think he was really happy we came. Additionally, I played badminton with my dad, and physical activity is always fun for me.

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

Because I am not super comfortable with C++, I always have to look things up. I have found https://www.cplusplus.com/reference/ to be quite useful when trying to find out what functions different classes have and how they work. The documentation looks a bit old fashioned, but it is definitely good quality.