CS371P — Final Entry — Nhat Minh Nguyen
How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?
These takeaways were repeated in every lecture so I think the course has conveyed them very well. In addition, you will have many chances to apply these takeaways to project assignments in the course so you will not have to memorize them intentionally.
Were there any other particular takeaways for you?
Always planning first, it could be done on paper or in your head. The fact that if you already have a good plan about how you solve the problem in the projects, the time you spend writing code is quite short. If you do the other way around, you will be frustrated and consume much more time.
How did you feel about cold calling?
It is not bad as others would imagine. Prof. Downing won’t be hard on you. This is just a way of helping you pay attention to the lectures.
How did you feel about office hours and lab sessions?
They are very helpful and enthusiastic. The instructor and TAs will give you lots of insightful and constructive advice for doing your assignments.
What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?
I have heard about Docker before but have not a chance to use it. Because the projects in this class required many tools, I ended up using the Docker image ( which already had these tools built-in) provided by Prof. Downing to test my code. Although running code through Docker is slower than running on a native machine, I found it very helpful and saved me a lot of time. You can run your code in a Linux — environment inside any host environment you have, without the requirement of an Internet connection, not like an SSH connection.
Give me your suggestions for improving the course.
The window time for doing paper assignments is relatively short. The assignments were open on Friday and due on Sunday. I think we should have a longer time for reading these papers because most of them contained a lot of important, subtle details and are worth thoroughly reading to clearly, deeply understand their concepts.
