CS371p Fall 2020: Barrett Schonefeld

What did you do this past week?

Coming into this week, I had already finished the implementation of Collatz. Hence, I did not devote a significant amount of time to this course. Instead, I placed my focus on getting started on my other classes to build a good foundation in those classes. I think having the opportunity to focus on other classes will end up being helpful in this class once we move to the projects beyond Collatz.

What’s in your way?

Nothing is in the way. I’m excited to see what comes next in the class.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will attend the lectures, do the reading and blog, and I will get started on the next project (assuming it will be released next week). I would like to work on the project with a partner. I know a couple of people in the class, so I will reach out to them about collaborating on the next project.

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

My experience of Collatz and the starter code is familiar. I have done the project two other times. I knew this coming into the class, and I’m still glad to be in the course because I know there is valuable, new information coming in the subsequent lectures and projects. I see why Professor Downing assigns this project in all of his classes because it does outline some great concepts about caching, testing, optimizing, etc., which are all critical to the software development process.

What made you happy this week?

I’m taking virtualization. My virtualization team developed a strategy to meet regularly to work through the class and the projects. We have regularly scheduled meetings in the calendar, and it made me happy because I know we will be able to discuss the class material and projects and get things done early. It’s always nice to have a good group dynamic.

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

My pick-of-the-week is an article on 12-factor apps. I read this article as part of the Cloud Computing course here, and I found it useful for understanding the software development process and how to structure large pieces of code. Some of the items in the article are things we’d find intuitive now, such as managing the code with version control, but they expand on these ideas by discussing how configuration data, dependencies, and the environment the code needs to run should be managed within the repository. It’s an interesting piece of information, especially those interested in understanding a bit about cloud computing (and more specifically, microservices).