CS 373 Fall 2020: Jesse Zou

Blog #11

What did you do this past week?

I worked on Phase III, which was super hectic. I also spent all of Friday grading exams.

What’s in your way?

I’m just so extremely burnt out this semester. Taking breaks help, but I always feel like taking a break isn’t enough to help recharge, and there’s not really any time to catch a “real” break.

What will you do next week?

I’ll be working on multiple projects, and as a TA for OS, I’ll be trying to get the students through pintos project 3: virtual memory. Project 3 has definitely been the most exhausting to debug since there’s so many different correct implementations, but it’s always rewarding to help students figure out what’s wrong.

If you read it, what did you think of The Dependency Inversion Principle?

I think the paper explains a lot of concepts that should always be considered by programmers, but I also know that a lot of programmers (including me) often overlook such principles for the sake of time and functionality.

What was your experience of relational algebra in Python? (this question will vary, week to week)

Relational algebra was pretty confusing at first. For the quizzes, I had a pretty hard time trying to work out the questions within 4 minutes. Over time though, it started to make more sense, especially when Professor Downing began to slow down a bit when we were learning about cross join, theta join, and natural join. The order in which we learned them really helped out.

What made you happy this week?

I watched the Netflix movie “Over the Moon” with my brother and cousin, but it was definitely one of the weirdest movies I’ve ever watched. I thought it was going to be very cultural, but it took a really weird turn after 10 minutes. It was kind of a “what the heck is going on but it’s funny since it’s so random” movie. I also got to sleep in on Saturday unintentionally. I was planning to wake up early to do work, but apparently I was so drained that I slept through all my alarms.

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

My tip-of-the-week of the week is to learn git commands beyond just the basics! Learning more about version control is super useful, especially when working with a team. It’ll help with resolving all the merge conflicts that come along too. There’s some good guides on freeCodeCamp if y’all have the time to check it out.