Joe's CSUMB Computer Science Blog

                 This week I worked with Rene, Martin, and Krithika. I read through the entire prompt first and then I started writing my code. I worked in order that methods were listed in the instructions. If a method required the use of another method, I would continue writing the code as if it was already implemented. I would then work on that method afterwards. I wrote the entire code first and then debugged. This worked well on the smaller projects but was a horrible idea for the big library project. Rene worked on the project in sections and he started off with the smaller methods first. This helped him understand the project better and reduced how many times he had to jump between tasks. Martin worked in a similar way. He tackled easier problems first and then worked on difficult problems. Krithika started off by writing out class methods in pseudo code first. This strategy helped her get a better idea about what she needed to ...

Summarize the feedback you received about your code Identify any trends you noticed when evaluating the code of others such as: everyone struggled with sorting or unit tests that were hard to pass Was any part of the code a struggle for YOU? Was any part of writing the code easy for YOU? What is your biggest victory?     This week my group mates reviewed some of my code from the Reader class and Book class assignment. My code ran as intended and they thought that my code was well structured. They also pointed out some small issues in my code. My code passed the unit tests, but these issues may affect how well others can read my code in the future. I think these minor issues stemmed from me not being as careful as I should have been. In the future, I will take my time to improve the readability of my code by doing things, such as leaving notes throughout my code, so others can better understand what I am trying to do. Most of the work I reviewed with my classmates loo...

    This week served as a great opportunity for me to familiarize myself with Git and Intellij. During the first week of class, I was not very comfortable with using Git and working with branches. I spent more time making sure I was doing this process correctly than I spent studying or writing code. After last week's assignments, I finally felt more comfortable with creating branches, and I was able to work through this week much more confidently. I still have a lot to learn, but the projects and labs we have done so far have provided me valuable repetition in working with Git. Additionally, the assignments we have done so far have made me realize that I like working on IntelliJ much more than Eclipse.     For the project, I did not have to spend too much time trying to get unit tests to pass, but there were a few methods in Reader.java that required more effort to make work. This week I spent most of my time working on the HW (Jotto), working mos...

    This week, we were assigned several coding problems on Coding Bat. These problems dealt topics such Strings, logic, and some data structures.     I thought the Coding Bat challenges were pretty simple, and I was able to finish the problems quickly. The one thing that slowed me down on certain problems was not understanding what kind of input the methods would receive. I answered the Coding Bat problems by throwing code at it, and it worked most of the time. If I answered a problem incorrectly, it was because I did not account for all types of acceptable input. Whenever this happened, I would go back and adjust the code to work for the kind of input that broke my code. Most attempts were successful on the first attempt, but I think there were a couple problems that took 3 attempts. In general when I am working with more difficult problems, I start by planning out how I will approach the problem and then I will throw code at it to test my approach to the problem.

Part 1: Review Other Teams' final video projects Seawolves https://youtu.be/VHa5m3_r3Jk      I thought this group's video was very well put together. They explained the history of the company and how certain events caused the company's goals to shift. The events that led to the changes in OpenAI were presented clearly so that the audience understood the story behind it. I thought the research in this video was in depth. I think the group's research is evident in how they could provide details on key players in the company. This video informed the audience of the roles these key players had and the events they were involved in. Overall I thought this video felt like a mix between a tech research paper and a current events paper (in a good way). I was able to learn about OpenAI and was drawn into the story about the growth of the company. Considering that there were only 2 people in this group, I assume a great deal of teamwork went into this project. Between the informat...

Part One      My group planned the video project through discord. We collaborated and assigned tasks by sending messages in our group chat, since some of us were too busy for a group call. Rene drafted an outline for our video to follow and we each volunteered to cover topics on the outline. Our current plan is to record our own videos for each topic. After this we will need to figure out how we will edit the videos together. This process has been smooth so far, and I think we will continue to work on projects this way for now. Part Two     This week, I was able to learn/refresh on some information about presentations. Visual aids can improve a presentation or ruin a presentations depending on how they are used. I think it is important to use visual aids that are visually appealing, but do not distract the audience. This information along with the rubric for the video project should help our group create an informative video that can also keep the attention of t...

  Part 1: Help Your Teammates to Develop Capstone Ideas      This week, my group mates and I discussed two possible ideas for capstone projects at the end of this course. The first idea was to develop a 2D platform game. This idea is personally my favorite. Even if this product is not chosen by the group, I have an interest in video games, and this may be a project I work on in my personal time. I may also look into making mods for the open sandbox video game Minecraft Java as well in the future. The second idea discussed were projects that use AI. A project we thought about was to create a program to transcribe handwriting. We believe that this type of program would be practical for many people to use across a variety of occupations. These are just some of the first ideas that came to mind, so we may go in a different direction with our project later on.   Part 2: Keep Up With Your Learning Journal      I felt much more comfortable this week usin...