CS373 Spring 2021: Tim Nguyen
Week 9
1. What did you do this past week?
This past week, I worked on making sure that my team and I fulfilled all the requirements for Phase II. It was a long weekend, but I am glad that we managed to get all the testing and UI improvements done. So far, I’ve been focusing on my other classes and trying to get ahead to make sure I have enough time for Phase III.
2. What’s in your way?
I would say that time is limited, and the semester is almost over in less than two months. I hope I have enough time to finish all my projects and I think setting up a mock DB for our Python tests will be a little challenging, but I am not worried. I’ll just do my best and work hard!
3. What will you do next week?
Next week, I’ll be doing an iOS presentation and taking my German exam. I also will be working on Phase III requirements with my team, so we don’t have a lot on our plate when the deadline comes around.
4. If you read it, what did you think of the Dependency Inversion Principle?
The Dependency Inversion Principle paper focused on the prevention of “bad design” and creating code that had “rigidity, fragility”, and “immobility”. I found the paper to a refresher to what Mike Scott taught me, which was to develop code that is reusable and easy to maintain.
5. What was your experience of +, *, ** and decorators? (this question will vary, week to week)
I didn’t know what these special characters did in Python until Professor Downing explained it. I have a better understanding now with passing a variable number of arguments or unpacking. Python has a lot of useful ways to do things. Thankfully, it is intuitive language to learn with its easy syntax compared to other programming languages.
6. What made you happy this week?
I received my second COVID-19 vaccination on Thursday, so I feel pretty happy about that! I will be graduating this semester, so I will feel safer attending the public commencement, and yes, I will wear a mask still! I hope wearing masks becomes a norm over here just like how people wear masks in many Asian countries if they are sick.
If you’re still looking to get vaccinated, take a look at http://www.bit.ly/wwwvaccines for vaccine resources here in Austin!
7. What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
If you’re still struggling to understand what the asterisks do in Python, here’s this link: https://treyhunner.com/2018/10/asterisks-in-python-what-they-are-and-how-to-use-them/
This article provides examples of the uses of asterisks in Python and hopefully, it helps to understand them a little better.
