What did you do this past week?

During this week I found a partner using Piazza and we got started really early on the last project, Life. We made extremely fast progress by planning out everything that each part of the simulation would be doing. So far we've created our interface, the Conway cell, Fredkin cell, and the Cell handle. While we're passing all of the tests for the Conway and Fredkin challenges, we're still working on completing the challenges for the mixed simulation. I'm pleased with how far along we are in the project.

What's in your way?

Right now all I need to focus on is finishing the last challenge with my partner. Since we are so far along with it, I don't think that I need to plan out the rest of the work very much, it shouldn't be tough to do the rest.

What will you do next week?

This next week I'm going to use my free time after class to work on Life and finish up the semester strongly. I plan on starting to look over all of the quizzes again so that I can prepare for the final exam. It's my goal to be very prepared for this test before it comes around. The first test taught me that even if you do well, you can lose a letter grade by missing one question, so I'm going to do my best to avoid that happening again.

What's my experience of the class?

I found the use cases we went over in class extremely helpful. Handle classes have been something that I've struggled to use in the past, instead I've used more roundabout solutions that are admittedly less intuitive. I appreciate learning about how to implement them, as I now plan to use them extensively.

What's my pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

This week's pick-of-the-week is this free book you can download that will give you an introduction to competitive programming. While I'm not a competitive programmer myself, the topics that the book covers will prepare you for the majority of questions that you can be asked in interviews.