CS373 Fall 2020: Sujoy Purkayastha
What did you do this past week?
This past week, I worked on assignments for my software engineering, iOS programming, and computational biology classes. Additionally, I took an exam for my British Literature class yesterday. Overall, I was quite busy; however, I was able to catch a break after last week, which was probably one of the most grueling semesters I have experienced at UT.
What’s in your way?
Currently, I have a lot of individual assignments for all of my classes due throughout this week. For software engineering, I have phase 3 due; however, most of the assignment has been completed. I also have the beta-release of my app due this Thursday, so I definitely need to get working with my team to finish that off as soon as possible!
What will you do next week?
As I have mentioned above, I really need to focus and get phase 3 completed in addition to the beta-release of my project for my iOS class. Additionally, I need to ramp up my preparation for a summer internship as the situation is a lot more competitive than it was last year at this time.
If you read it, what did you think of The Interface Segregation Principle?
It was a very interesting read. I learned about “fat” interfaces, which is an example of bad software design. The examples in the paper were slightly difficult to follow as I am not super familiar with the c++ programming language. Overall, I will certainly remember to use multiple inheritance practices to ensure that there are no weird interdependencies in my code.
What was your experience of instance methods, class methods, static methods, regular expressions, and relational algebra?
I was acquainted with the idea of instance, class, and static methods beforehand. I was not as familiar with regular expressions and relational algebra on the other hand. Regex at first seemed a bit cryptic, but it looked very powerful during Professor Downing’s in-class demonstrations. The last class was my first introduction to relational algebra. I learned that it was the basis for SQL, which is great as I’ve been using it (albeit not fully understanding) for the backend of the SWE project. We did a Python implementation of what SQL does under the hood.
What made you happy this week?
I was able to catch up on a lot of sleep! This helped me greatly to get back on track for my coursework!
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
As I have been preparing for summer recruitment, I found a YouTube channel called Back-to-Back SWE. The channel is very clear in its explanation of concepts ranging from data-structures, algorithms, and overall software design. I would highly encourage watching the videos on the channel if you have any gaps in your knowledge. There is almost certainly a video on that channel for whatever SWE concept you need!
