Week 3: Feb. 4 – Feb. 10

What did you do this past week?

Last week, I worked on the Collatz project and went to office hours when my GitLab CI unexpectedly failed to build. I also spent a lot of time on a difficult problem set for my Algorithms class and hope to start earlier on the next one. For my other classes, I studied for a couple of in-class quizzes and finished a few assignments. Aside from schoolwork, I went to the Lunar New Year event on campus and had a good time.

What’s in your way?

I’m feeling better after having a cold last week, so that’s no longer in my way. I’m feeling optimistic about my progress on the Collatz project overall, but I know that the test cases will take some time to finish and hope to start writing them as soon as possible.

What will you do next week?

I definitely plan to start building test cases and formatting my code for the Collatz project. I also have to finish several readings and continue reviewing my notes and looking over exercises to prepare for quizzes in each of my classes. Aside from that, I hope to attend another MAD workshop this week. I would like to learn more about web development so that I can be more prepared for the upcoming projects in this class.

What was your experience of learning the basics of Python?

Professor Downing’s lectures are helpful in learning the basic data structures and syntax of Python. However, they are very detail-oriented, and there are some subtleties regarding types and pointers that I will have to commit to memory. For example, the fact that you can assign a pointer to any iterable structure to a list’s ‘+=’ operator but cannot do the same to a tuple is a small but significant distinction between the data types.

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

This week, I discovered a helpful resource called DevDocs through the MAD Web Development workshop. It consolidates documentation for many different web development languages, such as Python, Ruby, and Rust, into one compact and easily accessible reference website.