Blog: First Entry
CS371p Spring 2022: Jonathan Randall
Where did you grow up?
I’m from Dallas, Texas. The New York City of North Texas.
What high school did you attend?
I went to Lake Highlands High School.
What was your favorite extracurricular activity in high school?
Definitely our school’s Spanish club. I loved learning about the language, culture, and contemporary issues facing Spanish-speakers. We also had some fun field trips.
Why did you come to UT?
In-state tuition, and Austin is a nice place.
Why are you majoring in CS?
I initially considered being a math major, but I had a fantastic CS teacher in high school (shoutout Dr. Luman!) who led me into wanting to be a programmer. Additionally, I love building things, and don’t mind fixing things.
Why are you in this class?
I took SWE with Professor Downing, and got more out of it than most other classes I’ve taken at UT. I want to brush up on my C++ and learn more about design patterns, UML, and everything OOP.
What are your expectations of this class?
I’m excited to dive deeper into OOP concepts and read more about design patterns.
How much C/C++ do you already know?
I only have C experience from UT’s Comp Arch and OS classes. My C++ experience is minimal.
How did you like the first lectures?
The new grading system will be interesting. I appreciated the Docker build walkthrough.
How did you feel about the cold calling?
Love it. Never stop. It keeps me on my toes, and it’s valuable to hear from other students as they work out problems.
What made you happy this week?
I am excited for my classes. One of my professors (Data Mining) mentioned an anecdote of an aerospace company performing predictive maintenance, which coincidentally was the company and project my previous manager worked on! Outside of school, I enjoyed going to Zilker and reading about welfare capitalism on one of the last warm days of January.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
My pick-of-the-week will be the excellent Git Branching tutorial by Peter Cottle.
