CS373 Fall 2020: Safin Kasturi
What did you do this past week?
This past week I spent the first few days working on my project with my team. Additionally, I had some exams on Monday, so that took away from my project work time a little bit. Towards the end of the week, I did some work for my other classes, and did some more applications for internships.
What’s in your way?
My team spent a decent amount of time designing static pages in HTML for the first phase of our project, so it will kind of be a waste of time to have to go back and re-do the website in ReactJS, but definitely beneficial in the long run. Additionally, we have not yet planned out what database we are going to use, so we need to get on that very soon.
What will you do next week?
This week we will get together and make a roadmap of all the things that our group needs to do for phase 2, then divide and assign tasks, and hopefully get started. Additionally, I have some essays to write for my government class, and some work to do for my other classes as well.
If you read it, what did you think of Why Is Silicon Valley So Awful to Women?
It was really shocking to hear some examples of how bad the instances of sexism are in the workplace. It’s really saddening to hear that women are automatically dismissed as less intelligent. Like racism, this is a significant issue that society needs to come together and overcome. There is no place for racism and sexism in society, let alone the workplace.
What was your experience of iterators, reduce(), and tuple? (this question will vary, week to week)
On Friday, I learned a little bit more about the inner workings of an iterator, including the fact that an iterator is an iterable object in itself. I also think the reduce function is pretty cool. It’s syntactically easier to call reduce than to write a for each loop and everything. Since I’m new to Python, I really have no prior knowledge of tuples, so I’m enjoying learner about the inner container of tuples as we progress in the course.
What’s it like working in a group? (this question will vary, week to week)
I personally have always enjoyed working in a group. I like it because once one person gets stuck behind a blocker, others can help work through it or around it. Also it allows for dividing tasks based on prior skills and knowledge, so everyone can work more efficiently. Additionally, I think it is a little bit less boring to work on complex projects with other people, and I think this is a big plus, because personally, I produce my best work when I’m actually enjoying myself a little bit.
What was your experience of the team contract? (this question will vary, week to week)
So far my team has worked together very well, no problems. So it feels like the team contract was a little unnecessary, but I can see how it would be very important for some groups, especially groups composed of people who do not already know each other. In my case, it helps that most of us in my group were already friends prior to this course.
What was your experience of the peer review? (this question will vary, week to week)
The peer review was pretty short and easy. Had no major problems with it because everybody in my group contributed towards the project, so everything went pretty smoothly.
What made you happy this week?
Even though the Cowboys lost, I won my fantasy football matchup this week, so I’m happy about that.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My tip of the week is W3 schools, which my team used a lot for creating the HTML of some pages for our website. It is a very resourceful site with examples and a try-editor.
