Weekly Blog #13

I hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. I definitely had a good time at home spending time with my family and getting to eat some good food. I took some work home and didn't get anything done. Now I have so much work to look forward to now. 

It is so hard to believe that this semester will be over in just a week, then just finals. Luckily, I have a very light finals week schedule. 

I'm so glad we didn't have to do any project over the break. I think it would have been just painful getting to organize meeting with a partner, and it is hard to just get stuff done over the break in general when I am at home. I am already looking forward to the winter break. 

Just looking back, I don't think I ever wanted to miss this class on purpose. I may have missed a few due to oversleeping, but I never thought to myself that I didn't want to go because the lectures were useless. I felt like the lectures were always useful and I could get most or all the information that I needed just from the lecture. Often, I feel like the lectures go over my head, and I miss a lot of stuff unless I go through the book. However, I felt like materials were explained very clearly in the class. I sometimes wish I took notes because I don't understand what he put some of the codes on the slides, the comments help, but sometimes there are no comments. 

Weekly Blog #12

It feels pretty good not to have a project in this class anymore. Overall I think this class had a very fair amount of homework. I think the ratio of how much I learned in this class to how much work was needed is huge. I think downing is definitely a good lecturer and I am definitely glad I took this class. I kind of wish I took this class little earlier in college so I can have these, what seems to be basic, knowledge. I'm surprised how much basic knowledge I was missing.

The handle class lessons are pretty interesting, I guess people use this tactic to protect against pointer bugs since it can almost impossible to debug in a huge program.

One really important thing I learned in this class is regarding blogs. I've read some of Joel's blogs before, but just once in a while, but since we read it quiet often in this class, I found myself going to his site myself to read some of his other blogs. Then I ran into some other blogs by other well-known software engineer bloggers. I've definitely come across good writers and across good and interesting ideas. I definitely can broaden my perspectives and learn a lot more and efficiently by reading what other people are thinking and are doing.

Weekly Blog #11

One thing I wanted to find out from blogging was whether I would like it. I don't think I like it too much, I don't find myself wanting to post something in a blog. I am only reminded weekly from everyone's posting that I need to do it for the extra credit. I probably will not continue blogging after this class, but I'm glad I got to try it.

I'm glad we don't have any more project after thanksgiving for this class. It is a nice break. I think the class stuff is getting more difficult, I wish I took some notes, because I am not able to recall everything from his codes anymore. The paper on gender difference was interesting, but I didn't think any of the findings were surprising at all.

As thanksgiving approaches, I was just thinking about the things I'm thankful for, and I'm really thankful for the opportunity to be at UT and studying here. I feel like it is so much hard work, but I often forget that it is a privilege to be studying at a university. I'm glad for the great faculty and the great cs program, at the end of it all, I do like what I'm learning and I'm really thankful that I get to be here.

Weekly Blog #10

Only one more project left in this class and we are done. I'm glad there is not a project due after thanksgiving. Time really does goes by fast as you grow older. I feel like freshmen year I did so much stuff, but now I feel like I'm not doing as much and time is just going by faster. I heard someone once wisely said "when you are young, each moment makes a big portion of your life, but when you are older, each moment is grows smaller and smaller in significance due to all your previous moments." It was something like that I don't know if he took it from someone, I wish I knew what the exact quote was if he did take it from some book or something.

This was my first time using piazza, from what I heard a lot of cs professors use it, but that was not the case for me. I had a very good experience with it, I really enjoyed how there was a live audience who would listen to your problems and answer them and help you through problems. I also liked the fact that the professor visited the page frequently to answer question in a timely manner. I wish I had something like piazza in some of my class from freshmen year when I had so much trouble understand everything. Sometimes the skeleton that was provided would be buggy, and I would spend all night trying to fix my code and only to find out near the due date that it was the skeleton. Sometimes asking questions to friends would help but sometimes your friend might not have gotten far enough to reach that problem. So I feel like piazza was really good, because different people will work on the project earlier throughout the semester and we can help each other if you happened to start early.