CS371p Spring 2021: Sonali Bhat

Week #6!

What did you do this past week?

This week, I spent a lot of time working with my partner on the Voting Project. We met for a couple hours every evening. We were able to get our code working and submitted on Hackerrank for all 50 points. We also finished getting our 20 required unit tests written!

What’s in your way?

I don’t feel like anything in particular is in my way.

What will you do next week?

Next week, I plan on meeting with my partner to figure out a way to write our acceptance tests. We also need to finish the formatting and documentation of our code.

If you read it, what did you think of the Single Responsibility Principle?

I thought it was interesting! It makes sense to separate your code by the responsibilities they serve. I know how that can be helpful in future development to be able to only use the functionality you need without having to unnecessarily having to run extra code. I think it’s difficult to learn when to split up code and when it’s better to just leave it coupled.

What was your experience of Voting and consts?

I think the Voting project has been good learning experience. It definitely forced me to get more familiar with pointers and references in C++. I thought that the consts and the const pointers and the various permutations of that to be a little confusing in class on Friday. I think I’ll probably need to spend a little more time going over that to make sure I understand exactly what each one means.

How did you fare in the storm?

My family and I were lucky! We didn’t lose any water/power.

What made you happy this week?

I was happy when my partner and I were able to get our code working on Hackerrank! We didn’t expect it to pass all three tests when it did, so we were very excited!

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

It’s useful to plan out a design for your code before you actually begin coding. Though its tempting to just start writing code, planning it out can save you some time in the future. Stepping through test cases on paper is useful as well! While working on the Voting project, my partner and I were trying to come up with test cases that would try the various possible paths our code could take. We found it easiest to write out possible cases on paper and step through them to make sure we understood what exactly we wanted to happen (versus what actually did).