CS371p Spring 2022: Jonathan Randall

What did you do this past week?

I finished Voting by bucketing each ballot by its top-ranked candidate. My partner and I thought a little bit about if we could make iteratively finding max and min counts more efficient. I wonder if anyone used a max-heap or a min-heap or both to do so. The issue is, of course, that the counts change between rounds! I wonder if there is an amazingly efficient solution to voting involving clever tricks and data structures not considered by us.

I rested, contracting an insane stomach flu type illness. It’s been way too busy, it was kind of a relief to be sick and bed-ridden. I know that there is a peculiar wellness center in South Korea where overworked adults check themselves into a mock prison, where the lack of autonomy or responsibility brings relief to a stressful mood. Perhaps this is what I need.

I accepted a job offer. I will be working full time next August at Amazon, probably in Seattle.

I need to remind myself that I am graduating this semester, and not to be in too much of a hurry to finish school.

What’s in your way?

I have a Data Mining exam on Tuesday. It is, unfortunately, not coding-related but instead more like a math test. It’s remote, so I will have to write math on paper and take pictures of my work. This is not fun or fast.

I must work through the next project in Big Data. We have like 2 days to do it, and I haven’t paid attention in lecture. Or, more accurately, I haven’t watched most of the pre-recorded lectures on streaming.

What will you do next week?

I am living one day at a time! I will be relieved to finish the Data Mining exam and hopefully destroy the Big Data project. As long as OOP has nothing to surprise me with, I should be good to go.

What did you think of Paper #7: Liskov Substitution Principle?

I had a feeling from the beginning that saying a Square “is a” Rectangle was a bad idea. I mean, look at them.

The actual “principle” in question is reasonable. I need to research the virtual keyword. Is virtual the default behavior of methods in Java?

What was your experience of consts, arrays, and equal?

Recalling SWE with Downing, I remember writing user-defined Iterators and working with Iterable objects in Python. C++ syntax is still somewhat unnatural to me. I need to research the :: operator and understand if it partially/completely replaces the . used in Java and Python.

What made you happy this week?

I went to see the Batman movie. It was okay. I was expecting more riddles.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My tip-of-the-week is: research other high-level programming languages! I’ve been reading/playing around with programming in Julia. It’s fun, and comparing languages reveals what is necessary and what is arbitrary in syntax, design, etc.

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