CS 371p Fall 2021: Shikhar Gupta
Week of 11/7
What did you do this past week?
This past week I had a few midterms and a project due so I’m glad to have gotten those out of the way. I was also able to catch up on some schoolwork and catch up in most of my classes, so I hope I am able to maintain that this week.
What’s in your way?
Nothing really is in my way at the moment. I have a few assignments for school coming up but nothing of major concern. As far as the project goes, my partner and I are still working on the overall design of our classes to avoid getters and setters and running into a few issues, but I hope that as we work more on the solution that the ideal way to work around the problem will become more clear.
What will you do next week?
I’m going to start working on the project and hopefully finish up before the weekend or early into the weekend. I also would like to get ahead in some of my classes so I can relax over the weekend.
If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #11: Getters and Setters?
We were taught to use getters and setters almost as an instinct in Data Structures, and it was an integral part of the way I learned Java, so it was surprising to learn that they are not an appropriate part of object-oriented design. However, when I think about a lot of industry-level code, it makes sense that we wouldn’t want users and possibly malicious users to know about the implementation details of various classes for cybersecurity reasons. It also takes more responsibility off of the user to have higher-level functions that are more capable rather than having getters and setters which don’t have a lot of functionality.
What was your experience of vector? (this question will vary, week to week)
I actually found it really interesting how well vector and all the containers manage memory. At the beginning of the semester, I assumed that the assignment of one vector to another would just change the reference itself, but learning that the containers do some dynamic memory management and that they check equality via checking all the elements of the vector is a really nice feature.
What made you happy this week?
I went home to Dallas and surprised my parents for Diwali this week, so it was nice to see them and be home for a while. It’s also nice to have some home cooked meals!
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My pick of the week is the book “Cracking the Coding Interview”. It’s a rich textbook that gives some really great tips and tricks on how to tackle technical and behavioral interviews for software engineering, and it also provides some great practice problems with detailed solution. I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking to brush up on their skills!
