CS 371p Fall 2020: Kent Hansen #7

1.What did you do this past week?

This week I began the Allocator project and started the initial setup for my implementation. I read the source code and tried to understand more deeply how the allocator should work and what modifications we need to add to Allocator.hpp.

2. What’s in your way?

In order to proceed I need to make a plan for how I will plan out my time to finish the project by next week. I also need to factor in time to study for the exam on Wednesday and Thursday.

3. What will you do next week?

This coming week I will work on implementing the Allocator project and making a page of notes that I can use for the exam as this will help solidify my understanding of the concepts we have covered and be a helpful tool during the exam itself.

4. If you read it, what did you think of The Open-Closed Principle?

I thought the Open-Closed Principle article was interesting as it articulated many of the commonly taught best practices for object oriented programming. I had been aware of these practices but the article went into detail and providing examples and explanations that helped me understand why we follow these conventions.

5. What was your experience of iterator concepts, std::array, and std::vector? (this question will vary, week to week)

I enjoyed learning about these concepts in class as I could connect them with using iterators and other data structures in Java while at the same time understanding why we should prefer to use some structures over others.

6. What made you happy this week?

This week I had a bit less homework than I normally do each week so I had more time to relax and stay on top of other tasks I had. I also was able to prepare for a couple of interviews that I had during the week.

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

My pick-of-the-week is a functionality that I learned about in pandas, the python DataFrame package called read_fwf(). I ran into an issue where I needed to deal with a strangely formatted dataset in a txt file for my job and I was able to use this function to specify how the data should be read in and format it how I had intended.