CS371p Spring 2020: Rahul Ramaswamy

May 3rd, 2020

What did you do this past week?

This past week, I worked on finishing up project Life and most of my other final homework assignments. Most of my classes have finished giving out assignments and all that remains is finals and exams.

What’s in your way?

The only issue we are having with project Life is writing the makefile command to run all of the tests. We have tried string parsing methods to parse the filenames, but have not had much success.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will be spending a lot of time studying for finals and last exams. I have three exams, including the one for this class, this week, so my schedule will mostly involve preparing for these. The other exams I have are for CS331 and M362M, which are both challenging courses, so I am not looking forward to these exams.

What was your experience of virtual, pure virtual, and smart pointers? (this question will vary, week to week)

I was able to understand virtual and pure virtual pretty easily since I remembered similar concepts in Java using interfaces and abstract classes. Smart pointers, however, were a new concept to me. I had never heard the term handle class or used a name for an encapsulated pointer.

What made you happy this week?

This week I heard that Austin (and I think Texas in general) has started opening up gradually. I am not sure if it is the best idea to start this process at this point, but if it works out next semester will hopefully be either in-person or hybrid. This would be the ideal situation because another semester online would just be stressful and difficult.

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

My tip of the week is to go on drives outside to get some fresh air and for a change of scenery. Every few days I like to just drive down the highway and listen to music to destress and take a break from the quarantined life.