CS371P Spring 2021 Week 2: Nhat Minh Nguyen

1.What did you do this past week?

Last week, I did finish my first assignment of the CS439 class and this assignment helped me a lot about using Git and GitHub. I have heard about these things before but never use them until now.

2.What’s in your way?

I have the next assignment of the CS439 class which is about thread and concurrency. These concepts still are not clear to me so far but I hope I can finish their implementation on time.

3. What will you do next week?

In the next week, I am going to start doing the first project of the CS371P class. Although this is the first project, it involves a lot of things looking new to me. Thus, there is a lot of work for me.

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

I think there are a lot of things and instructions inside a makefile. I think it would have taken a lot of time for the person who created the makefile. However, it is so convenient and useful for the people who going to use this file.

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

I have not tried Docker yet. But I will use it when I start doing the first project. I like the idea behind Docker. I am not having a powerful machine that has a ton of memory, so the way using a virtual machine sounds really expensive to my hardware and ineffectively to my workflow. I know that Docker still requires a decent amount of hardware but of course, not as much as virtual machines.

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

Honestly, I did very little about assertions in programming so far. Most of the time, I do “printf” and I know that a bad habit for debugging.

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

Before coming to CS371P class, I have never heard about unit tests. I only know about assertions and even so, I barely use assertions in my code. Most of the time I use “printf” to debug. The result that unit tests produce looks so attractive to me, however, using them is more complicated than using assertions.

8. What made you happy this week?

It’s about the first assignment of the CS439 class again. I still had not figured out how to do this assignment until 1 day before the deadline. And then I finished almost all of them in the morning of that day. I am so happy about that although it is just an assignment and maybe the easiest in this semester.

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

If you have to do a programming assignment and you still do not have any clues about what to do. Just try to think about it as simple as possible, then come up with a simple solution. Then, you will find out that the problem is not only as simple as you think but also not as complicated as you think in the first place.