CS371p Final Entry: David Durairaj

1. What did you like the least about the class?

I actually liked the format of the tests for this course, but I think more time would have been helpful on the tests. Additionally, I think some of the information we were taught after having started project 5 could have been taught before we started the project since that material would have made implementing my solution easier.

2. What did you like the most about the class?

I actually really liked both the daily quizzes and his cold-calling because it kept me on my toes and forced me to be engaged. It also pushed me to quickly find help when I didn’t understand something, which in turn helped me learn a tremendous amount of information. Another interesting aspect of this class that I found helpful was the in-class Hacerrank exercises. These exercises gave me practice implementing constructs that we learned in class, which helped me to better understand the material.

3. What’s the most significant thing you learned?

The most significant thing I learned in this course would be the C++ programming language. This class was the first time where I had major exposure to this language, and I feel better prepared to use the C++ language to build more complicated systems.

4. How many hours a week did you spend coding/debugging/testing for this class?

I would say I spent a total of 15 hours/week for this class outside of lectures. I did hit 20+hrs/week more than once during the semester for the projects, but a majority of that was done over the weekends.

5. How many hours a week did you spend reading/studying for this class?

I would say I spent about 1-2 hours a week studying for the quizzes and tests. I spent about 20 minutes a week reading, though that reduced as the course progressed.

6. How many lines of code do you think you wrote?

I wrote about 200–500 lines of code per project, so overall probably around 1500 lines of code altogether.

7. What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

GitLab was the two tool that I found most useful in this course.

8. What’s the most useful tool that your group used that was not required?

Docker is an incredible tool that you should use even if not required. It helped me tremendously for all the projects because I didn’t have to worry about machine-dependent libraries, packages, and tools while running project code.

9. If you could change one thing about the course, what would it be?

The only thing I would change about this course would be more time spent on the last topics we covered in class.