CS373 Fall 2020: Daniel Deng
Welcome back, this is my second blog post for Software Engineering.
What did you do this past week?
Honestly, this past week has been my past 6 months. I would attend class, eat at the appropriate time, take a stroll around the park, and go to sleep. For Prof. Downing’s class, in particular, we have been working on assertions and optimizations for the Collatz project, which I should be getting started on.
What’s in your way?
Unlike most people, time management is not usually an issue for me. However, I have been finding it hard to keep myself motivated to complete assignments. After being stuck at home for half a year, you really start to seek excitement in life. Once I’m out of here, I’m gonna go skydiving or something…
What will you do next week?
For the bulk of next week, I will be working on the Collatz project. Despite my apathy, I’m going to try to push through and complete it before the middle of the week just in case it takes longer than I expect it to.
What was your experience of assertions, unit tests, and coverage?
I’ve never actually had experience doing assertions, unit tests, and coverage prior to this class. However, over the past week, I learned what each of these does in Software Engineering. Assertions, while not good for alerting the user on errors, are good for pre and post-conditions. Unit tests are good for testing individual components of the code, and coverage tests are good for seeing how much of the code is actually tested.
How are you doing and holding up? What’s been most helpful for you in terms of support at this time?
I feel like I have been in a constant state of zen despite the world going to chaos in the last year. This is mostly because I realize I will have no memories to look back on a couple of years in the future, which is quite sad. I find it helpful to keep myself busy doing chores, or doing some hobbies, or doing something productive.
What made you happy this week?
I finally got to catch up with some of my friends this week in real life. Don’t worry, it was a small group and we were conscious of our contact.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My pick-of-the-week is a chrome extension called video speed controller. I have realized it is vital to speed up lecturers who record and talk slowly. https://github.com/igrigorik/videospeed