CS 371p Spring 2023: Tara Sophia Roshan: Final Entry

• How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?

Very well! I think the course was set up in a way that made it easy to apply what you've learned as the course goes on.

• Were there any other particular takeaways for you?

How important it is to ask questions and visit the TA help sessions. The TAs and Dr. Downing were invaluable. I really appreciate how much work the teaching staff put into helping us understand the material and seeming approachable.

• How did you feel about cold calling?

It was kind of stressful but fun! I didn't have any bad cold-calling experiences because I just saw it as a fun challenge.

• How did you feel about specifications grading?

It made the process of preparing for the class less stressful. It feels more intuitive than the classic grading scheme of "make sure you get this average score with these assignment weights" because I wasn't constantly calculating my average. It was less stuff for me to be concerned about and keep in my head at all times.

• How did you feel about help sessions and office hours?

I never attended office hours, but I found the help sessions with the TAs to be very useful!

• How did you feel about the support from the TAs?

I really, really appreciated the TA help sessions! The TAs helped clear up a lot of confusion and were very approachable. There were a lot of times when I was scared to post on Ed (I wish there was an anonymous feature) and so I would message the TAs on Teams. I think that made more work for them (please add an "anonymous to class" feature!), so I really appreciate their efforts.

• You should have read five papers that describe SOLID design: Single Responsibility, Open-Closed Principle, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion. What insights have they given you?

They've given me a basic framework for analyzing and refactoring code, but I don't fully understand them yet since I didn't do much focused practice of the SOLID design principles. I just read about them instead of doing any exercises with them.

You should have read two papers that advised minimizing getters and setters. What insights have they given you?

Do work closer to the data. Try to ask people to do the work for you instead of asking them to get the data for you?

• What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

I think gcov was really interesting. I didn't know about coverage before this class, but I feel like it's a super, super useful concept and tool to use!

• In the end, how much did you learn relative to other UT CS classes?

I learned a lot from this class. I really appreciate the tools we used and the way that the course material was set up. There were a few times where I felt like we didn't have the information necessary for a project until the week it was due (eg. with the vector for Ballot), but otherwise I feel like I learned a lot from this class. It was a really good course.