CS378 Week of 25 Jan — 31 Jan

What did you do this past week?

Last week I familiarized myself with some of the technologies I will be using this semester.

What’s in your way?

My sleeping schedule has been a bit off recently. I plan on making an adjustment this week to bring things back to normal so I can be well rested for what this semester has to bring.

What will you do next week?

Next week I plan on staying on top of my responsibilities for my classes. I plan on continuing the good habits I developed last semester and hope to bring in more this semester.

If you read it, what did you think of the makefile?

The makefile seemed intimidating at first glance, but after reading through it carefully, I can make sense of the whole thing. I also did some research on makefiles in general and they are very important for automating the setup process of a project.

What was your experience of Docker? (this question will vary, week to week)

I had heard of Docker before, but I never really understood how to use it or even what its function was. Now that I know how to use Docker and how a Docker image is made, I know that Docker is very useful and powerful. Being able to obtain the exact tools needed in a completely virtual environment is truly magical.

What was your experience of assertions? (this question will vary, week to week)

I used assertions in OS and have seen them from time to time, but I did not put much though into them. When Professor Downing explained how assertions act as both comments and checks for preconditions, I realized how cool and practical assertions really are, and I plan on using them in my code.

What was your experience of unit tests? (this question will vary, week to week)

Unit tests are so useful. I have used mocha for JavaScript unit tests, and Laravel’s Artisan tool for PHP tests. One tip that really stood out to me was to create a unit test first when encountering a bug, instead of going out to fix the bug first. This is something I plan on doing from now on.

What made you happy this week?

I was able to make a good amount of progress on a side project.

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

I stumbled across a site (vim.so) that is a tool for practicing using Vim. I thought it was pretty cool, and if you are not fully comfortable with all the keyboard shortcuts and basic functionality of Vim, I highly recommend this website for practice!