CS373 Spring 2021 Final Entry: Siddhesh Krishnan
Long-term Takeaways:
- test first, test during, test after; test, test, test
- when designing algorithms, demand the weakest capabilities (e.g. iterable vs. indexable)
- when designing containers, provide the strongest capabilities (e.g. indexable vs iterable)
- build decorators on top of containers, iterators, and functions
- utilize the benefits of being lazy (i.e. yield)
- always look for reuse and symmetry in your code
- collaboration is essential to the quality of your code and to your well-being in producing it
- refactor, refactor, refactor
- make your code beautiful
How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?
I believe that the course conveyed these takeaways fairly well. Throughout the class, we went through topics such as various containers in Python, different ways to iterate through a list and more, and I believe that these concepts have closely conveyed the takeaways of the course.
How did you feel about cold calling?
While the cold calling could be frightening at times, I believe that it allowed me to keep up with the material in class so that I could answer the questions in class correctly if I did end up being called upon. The cold calling made me accountable for the material in class which allowed me to understand the key takeaways from class much quicker and better compared to if we didn’t have cold calling.
How did you feel about office hours?
While I did not have the opportunity to attend the office hours sessions, I believe that they were extremely helpful int the fact that they were a great time to ask either Professor Downing or any of the other TAs questions over any of the material presented in class.
How did you feel about lab sessions?
I also did not have the opportunity to attend the lab sessions, but I believe that they were extremely helpful int the fact that they were a great time to ask any of the TAs questions over your project or help related to deploying your website, or any TypeScript/CSS questions in general.
What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?
One tool which I did not know and now find extremely useful would be AWS. Working through deploying the website, I was able to learn some more about AWS (especially RDS from uploading the data to Postgres).
What’s the most useful Web dev tool that your group used that was not required?
One Web Dev tool which my group used which was not required was Material-UI. Using Material-UI was extremely new to me as I have never used it before, however it was great to use on our website as it helped a low with our styling when it came to the cards as well as the table.
How did you feel about your group having to self-teach many, many technologies?
While it was fairly difficult to learn new technologies with barely any guidance, there were and still are multiple videos out on the internet which helped my group and I use these technologies in our website and hopefully use these technologies in the future as well.
Give me your suggestions for improving the course.
The course was extremely great in the fact that we got to learn new technologies and work on a project which was meaningful and could have a positive impact on society. The only suggestion I have to improve the course would be to focus more in-class on the technologies we will be using for our IDB project.
