What did you like the least about the class?

The lectures and the projects had very little overlap, so I had to do a lot of learning outside of class.

What did you like the most about the class?

I’ve learned a ton about languages and tools that other CS courses at UT don’t really give exposure to.

What’s the most significant thing you learned?

I came into this class knowing very little about how the web worked, but I think I have a much stronger grasp on the fundamentals now.

How many hours a week did you spend coding/debugging/testing for this class?

In my opinion, the first half of the semester is much harder than the second, since the projects become more about optimizing the site instead of building from scratch. I probably spent 15 hrs/week in the first half, and closer to 5 hrs/week in the second.

How many hours a week did you spend reading/studying for this class?

If you follow along with Downing’s lectures, there isn’t much reading or studying you need to do outside of the class (projects aside). It’s immensely helpful to review his HackerRank implementations before the exam, and I probably spent 5-10 hrs doing that during exam weeks.

How many lines of code do you think you wrote?

A couple thousand.

What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

Flask and React.

What’s the most useful Web dev tool that your group used that was not required?

psycopg2

How did you feel about your group having to self-teach many, many technologies?

It was manageable, but I would rather have learned these tools in a classroom setting.

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

I think these are definitely preferable to one-stage exams. I found the collaboration useful for exploring different implementations.

How did you feel about the cold calling, in the end?

Cold calling was a good way of keeping me attentive during lecture, and this in turn made me more interested in the concepts being covered.

What did you do this past week?

This past week, I was able to make a lot of progress on Phase 2 of our project, and I am satisfied with my level of contribution. Classes resumed this week, so I’ve had to get in the groove of online-classes and staying on top of all of my assignments. Now that in-person lectures are no longer a thing, there’s a lot more responsibility on us students to frequently check for messages and announcements from our professors about any new assignments or modifications to the course.

What’s in your way?

I have a fair number of projects and papers for my other classes that are due soon, so I need to handle those before I can fully commit to Phase 3 of the SWE project.

What will you do next week?

We have less time to work on Phase 3 of the project than we did Phase 2, so it’s prudent for us to begin that soon. My group and I need to make high-level plans for what we want to accomplish during this phase, and we need to figure out how we want to assign responsibilities.

What was your experience of Test #1b?

I did not have a great experience with Test #1b, mainly because the new Zoom and Proctorio environments were unfamiliar territory. A few of my teammates had technical difficulties, which made communication difficult. Also, my clipboard was disabled during the duration of the exam, so when it came time for us to share answers with each other, I had to manually write code in, and this gobbled up a non-trivial amount of time.

What made you happy this week?

Phase 2 of the project looked very daunting, and my group and I had not done much work on it over Spring Break. I’m glad we were able to finish it, and I’m proud of the way the website looks and operates right now.

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

My online calendar has become incredibly important since online-classes began. Before, it was usually sufficient for professors to remind me in-person of upcoming deadlines. Now, most announcement come to us via online messaging, so it’s up to me to remember to check these and add any new deadlines to my calendar. Doing this helps me stay on top of the work that I need to accomplish.

Are you and your family safe and sound where you are?

Yes, I was fortunately able to come back and stay with my parents.

How do feel about your ability to finish the term completely online?

Prof. Downing’s class is more interactive than most courses I’ve taken before, so it will be interesting to see if the same energy can be maintained via online lecture. I’m a bit more worried about the collaborative component of the exams, since I think it will be much more difficult to communicate ideas and code online.

What made you happy this week?

It’s been really nice being home and spending time with family.

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

It can be beneficial to take a step back and really understand the fundamentals before tackling a new problem. I ran into this while working on my SWE project this week. I spent several hours trying to write React just by referencing online examples, but it wasn’t really working out. I ended up spending that same amount of time watching tutorials on React, and these tutorials helped me become significantly more productive when it came to writing code for the project.

What did you do this past week?

I was very busy this week with school, likely likely because many professors wanted to get our projects and exams in before we left for Spring Break. I had quite a few assignments due this week, along with a paper and two exams. I spent quite a bit of time studying for the SWE exam, and I think I did fairly well on it. Part 2 of the exam has been delayed due to the school cancellations, so I’ll have to review the concepts again before we have to take that.
I was not able to give much time to phase 2 of the project last week since I prioritized other things. Now that Spring Break has been extended, I’ll have more time to work on my SWE and iOS projects. I’m almost done contributing to my iOS project for the alpha release, so I can now devote most of my time to focus on SWE.

What’s in your way?

The data for one of our models in the SWE project is not as clean as we expected, so we need to work on cleaning that. A lot of the components of phase 2 of the project build on each other, so it’s important that we complete our database before moving forward.

What will you do next week?

My team and I need to finish creating the database for our project. After that, we can work on pulling that data with our API and filling in the website dynamically. Fortunately, the deadline for phase 2 has been pushed back, giving us more time to make front-end improvements and write solid unit tests.

What was your experience of Test #1a?

I’ve never taken an exam on HackerRank before, but the process was pretty smooth. I felt more time-crunched during this exam than any of my other CS exams, but that was probably more due to the nature of the problems. I really like the fact that we can run our code and immediately know how we performed on the test cases.

What made you happy this week?

This has been a super busy week, and I was worried that something would go wrong. Somehow, I managed to complete all my assignments on time, and I felt good about my performance on the exams.

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

I’ve been reading more and more about the tools that people are using to help contain the spread of COVID-19. Google is reportedly coming out with a website to triage cases in the Bay Area, so it’s really cool to see how technology can be used in ways that it hasn’t before.
As the world becomes increasingly connected and stores more data than ever before, it’s important for engineers to think about ways to leverage that capability to solve novel problems. It’s also important to think about the ways that new technology can be misused and to build in preventative measures early on.

What did you do this past week?

This past week, my group and I began work on phase 2 of the project. It looks like phase 2 will require a lot more work to complete (especially compared to the other phases), but, if you include Spring Break, we also have more time to work on this one. So far for this project, I wrote and posted the user stories for our developer, and I scraped the API of one of our models and packaged it up into a JSON. I did a bit of data-cleaning with my Python script beforehand, and this was done to eliminate certain data points that we didn’t care about or combine attributes of different queries to augment our data points.

I also spent a lot of time last week working on assignments for my other classes, and I’ve had to grade exams for the class that I proctor for. It’s a very large CS class, so it’s taken me longer than expected to get through these exams. I now understand why my old teachers kept saying how much easier it was to grade correct answers than try to understand why a wrong answer was wrong.

What’s in your way?

Phase 2 presents a lot of new tools and frameworks that we need to familiarize ourselves with. My little exposure to databases has come from my work in industry, but there is still a lot more I need to learn to be able to meaningfully contribute to this project. That being said, these new tools look very promising, and I look forward to learning them.

What will you do next week?

I’m trying to avoid working on the SWE project during Spring Break. However, I have several exams, projects, and a paper all due this week, so I’m not sure how much time I’ll be able to dedicate to the project. If that is the case, then I’ll definitely have to work on the project over break, since the deadline for phase 2 is the week after break.

I’m close to finishing my projects due this week, so the rest of my week will be spent studying for the exams and writing that paper.

What was your experience of =, *, **, and decorators?

Unpacking arguments in functions still feels like a very foreign idea to me. It’s nice that Python can even support such functionality, but it’ll definitely take me some time getting used to. I really like how decorators not only simplify code, but they also improve the code’s style and readability.

What made you happy this week?

I got to spend quality time with my friends grabbing food and playing board games.

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

An article by the New York Times recently came out detailing the software flaws of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. One of the issues involved setting the clock on the spacecraft incorrectly. The article states that the engineers had failed to catch the bug during testing because they had split the simulation into chunks instead of running it as a whole. This shows us that, while unit tests are important, integration tests are vital in confirming the integrity of a system.

What did you do this past week?

This past week, we submitted our work for phase 1 of the project. Although we had made quite a bit of progress last weekend, there was still a lot to do before our submission on Thursday. One frustrating part of working on this static website was that we were having trouble seeing our updates reflected in the prod-website. Only later did we realize that this was because the network was caching our website, so we would have to wait for the network to refresh its cache before we could confirm that our changes had been made.

What’s in your way?

Phase 2 of this project looks quite challenging. Professor Downing went over some of the requirements in class, and it looks like it’ll require a lot of learning. We have quite a bit of time to work on this phase (although Spring Break is in the middle of it), but I look forward to learning all of the new languages and tools.

What will you do next week?

Next week, I have quite a few things that I need to do that are unrelated to SWE and unrelated to school. For work relating to phase 2, my goal is to become familiar with React and work on changing our pages from static to dynamic.

What was your experience of comprehensions, generators, and yield?

Each week we learn Python, I’m more and more impressed with the built-in functionality of the language. Generators are no exception. The simplicity of syntax to create these iterators impresses me.

What made you happy this week?

I finally got to watch Pulp Fiction this week. I’ve only seen a couple Tarantino films, but I’ve liked all of them and was eager to watch a classic like this one. It was a very enjoyable movie, and I’m glad I got to watch it in the company of friends who also hadn’t seen it.

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

I read that there’s a new feature among some Chinese apps that uses location history to determine how long people have been in certain cities for. This data is used by health officials to determine who does and doesn’t need to be quarantined. I’m impressed by the speed at which this was implemented, and it’s interesting to see how governments like China can use smart phones at scale in a health crisis.

What did you do this past week?

This past week has been pretty light in terms of workload. In one of my other CS classes, my group had to turn in a design document for our semester project. Fortunately, we were all able to get behind a single idea, and it looks like it will be a very exciting project to work on. In SWE, my group and I met up to work on the parts of the project due for Phase 1. Since most of us were unfamiliar with the world of web development, a large portion of that time was spent researching, learning, and asking each other questions. I was able to make progress on the About page for our website, specifically in retrieving user stats using the Gitlab API.

What’s in your way?

The deadline for Phase 1 of the project is on Thursday, and we still have a number of issues that we need to close. Fortunately, I think most of the hard stuff has now been completed, so hopefully the rest of the work for Phase 1 will not be too difficult. By far, the main hurdle with this project is in the steep learning curve of web development, especially since the programming paradigm is so different from the stuff that we’ve learned in our other classes.

What will you do next week?

Our group needs to close out the rest of the issues for Phase 1. I also have a paper to write for my non-CS class that is due this week, but I should be able to devote most of my time to working on the SWE project.

What was your experience of iteration, AWS, and Chef Secure?

Professor Downing always finds an interesting way to communicate the eccentricities of Python, and his lecture on iteration was no exception. I was particularly surprised that calling iter() on an iterator always returns itself.
I’m glad we were able to get a lecture on AWS. Most of this class has focused on topics unrelated to the projects. While the lectures have proven to be pretty interesting, it still is frustrating to have to learn so much outside of the classroom. I had no prior experience with AWS, so getting the tutorial from Hannah was useful. I also found the lecture from Chef Secure to be quite interesting, especially when he showed us the the security risk when saving passwords in the browser.

What made you happy this week?

I discovered a board game bar in Austin that allows you to order food and play from a wide selection of games hosted at the restaurant. One of the games we played was called Captain Sonar. The rules proved to be a little confusing, so it took us a while to get the hang of the game. However, the game itself is very exciting, so we were all quite worked up by the end of it. Playing board games is always one of my favorite activities, so I’m glad that restaurants like this even exist.

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

When I went to vote last week, I noticed that we had to submit a printed paper ballot this time. I didn’t have to do this when I voted in previous years, so I suspect this is out of fear of ballot-tampering. The distrust of electronic voter machines is a sign that technology still has a long way to go if people are to entrust it to something as important as a governmental election.

What did you do this past week?

This past week has been fairly busy in terms of academics. Our weekly iOS assignments continue to grow in complexity and always take up a chunk of my time mid-week. On top of that, our SWE project was due this past Tuesday. Fortunately, I was able to complete it last weekend ahead of schedule, so my time this week for that project was just spent double-checking requirements and making sure I didn’t miss anything. On top of that, I had another paper to write for my non-CS class. Fortunately, I find the topic pretty interesting, so it’s not too difficult to come up with content. Finally, I’ve had to grade a lot of homework for the class that I’m an undergraduate proctor for.

Outside of school, I was able to fit in time to watch 1917, one of the nominees for Best Picture. It was a really entertaining movie that was shot in an exciting way, and I’d highly recommend it. Also, the score was incredible.

My SWE group and I met up today to discuss the details of our project, and we were able to figure out our topic and find some data sources as well. It’s an interesting idea, and I’m excited to work on it this semester with my teammates.

What’s in your way?

The first deadline for this SWE project is coming up, and there are a lot of tools and frameworks that I need to familiarize myself with before submission.

What will you do next week?

This next week I hope to make significant progress on our SWE project. Although the first submission isn’t due until the following week, I’d like to start early, since I know we’ll encounter challenges that will inevitably push us back.
Outside of SWE, my iOS team and I need to formalize our project idea and begin work on that as well. I also have a little bit of work left to complete for my Data Mining class.

What was your experience of Project #1: Collatz?

The Collatz project for SWE was a little overwhelming at first. I was unfamiliar with many of the tools that Prof. Downing wanted us to use, so there was a steep learning curve with that. However, the algorithm itself to solve Collatz was very easy to write, especially with the hints that Prof. Downing gave to us in class.
I think Collatz was a really good first project, both because it gave us experience to tools we’d encounter in industry, but also because it offered a good glimpse of what this class would be like for the rest of the semester.

What made you happy this week?

This past weekend, a couple of my friends came into town, and another one of my friends celebrated her birthday. We were all able to hang out and get food together, which is always a nice experience.

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

I recently learned that double-clicking the power button can activate Apple Pay on my watch. I was initially very hesitant to adopt mobile payments simply I didn’t want to go through the trouble of adding cards to my phone. However, when I realized how easy it was to access and pay from my wrist, I quickly became a mobile payments power user. I think making usage of a product as seamless as possible is one of the most effective ways at encouraging adoption of that product. Once I realized how little friction there was in accessing Apple Pay on my watch, it became my first choice method of payment.

What did you do this past week?

This past week has been pretty light in workload, so I had time to play catch up and also do things outside of school. I caught up on readings in my non-CS class, which is important since I have an essay on those readings due this next week. I also finished the assignments in my other classes ahead of time, and I got my grading done for the class that I’m a proctor for. This week also gave us two episodes of The Bachelor instead of the usual one, so I spent some quality time watching that with my friends. I also allocated time for myself to cook, exercise, and read. For this class specifically, I’m almost done working on Project 1, but I still need to generate some acceptance tests before submitting.

What’s in your way?

Things have been pretty smooth, so I don’t have too much in my way right now.

What will you do next week?

This week I need to write the paper for my non-CS class and complete Project 1 for SWE. There are also a couple career events happening this week. Even though I already made internship plans for the Summer, it’s always an educational experience going to these events. Almost always, I learn something new about a company that changes my perception of them. Time permitting, I’d like to check these out (and hopefully pick up some nice swag too)!

What was your experience of exceptions, types, and operators?

I really liked Prof. Downing’s approach in explaining exceptions, specifically by showing us how difficult coding would be without them. I also found it interesting that even types in Python still have types, but this makes absolute sense. Learning about operators this week also exposed me to l-values and r-values, which I’m sure are terms abound in industry.

What made you happy this week?

One of my close friends celebrated his birthday this weekend, and we got to throw him a surprise party and bake a cake for him. Spending time with these friends is always a fulfilling experience, and it’s something I’ll miss after college.

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

Google Maps celebrated its 15th year this last week, and they updated their app icon as part of that. The new icon is a multi-colored pin overlaid on a white background, making it consistent with the rest of the Google suite. I have a lot of Google apps on my phone and was always bothered that Google Maps did not share the same design principles in its icon design, so I’m glad to see that it’s been adopted. I think the lesson from this is that customers appreciate consistency in the products they use. Software developers should aim to make their products as seamless and intuitive as possible, and one way to accomplish this is by making designs predictable and recognizable.

What did you do this past week?

It’s only the second week of the new semester and things have already begun picking up. A lot of my time this week was spent working on assignments from my other classes, but I’ve also spent some time on SWE. It’s taken some time getting used to GitLab. There are a number of files in the project, but Prof. Downing has done an excellent job of explaining the purpose behind each one of them.

What’s in your way?

Currently, I’m working on optimizing the Collatz algorithm solver. It’s only able to pass the first test case, and it times out on the others.

What will you do next week?

For this next week, I plan on finishing optimization of my algorithm so that it’s able to pass the tests on HackerRank. After that, I’ll need to familiarize myself with all of the commands and tools to run and generate tests. After that, I’ll need to make sure the code-style is good.

What was your experience of assertions, unit tests, coverage, and continuous integration?

So far in my project, I have not yet made use of assertions, unit tests, coverage, or continuous integration. The paper assigned to us about continuous integration was very interesting, and I think is very applicable to work in industry. In one of my previous internships, we used a continuous integration server to build and run tests on a frequent basis. I saw many of the principles mentioned in the paper put into practice during that internship.

What made you happy this week?

This week, I finished a paper and a programming assignment for my other classes well ahead of time. I’m trying to be more responsible with my time this semester, and it’s off to a pretty good start. I hope I can say the same for this SWE project. I also got to spend some time playing games and cooking with friends.

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

My tip-of-the-week is make lists and not hesitate to write things down. Software projects have many different moving parts, so it can be hard to keep track of everything that needs to be done. Keeping a check list both helps to organize those thoughts and offers an endorphin-boost when you’re able to check something off that list. Lists can be a boon both for your productivity and your mental health. GitLab has a helpful tool for making such lists.