CS 373 Fall 2022: Fernando Mercado - Week 8

 

What did you do this past week?

Our group was able to set up a skeleton of our database and made great progress on the project as a whole this week. I have also been doing a lot of work on my iOS app, which the alpha release should be done this coming Monday! 

What's in your way?

Much like last week, my classes are all competing for my time and it seems there is too little time to go around. I think I need to be much more selective with what I devote my time to and even cut back on things I would usually do until this hump of work is done.

What will you do next week?

I will start building the beta build of my app, and finish out phase II of the project for this class. I will also be taking the Texas government UT test (to complete my AP government credit from HS). I have two essays due for classes and also of course, will be Leetcoding.

What did you think of Paper #8: The Integration Segregation Principle?

I like that the last few papers have all been somewhat continuations of the previous. It helps to solidify the learnings of what we are reading by using examples that we have already learned about and understand. I found the figures in this particular paper extremely helpful in understanding the concept, as I think it was a bit more abstract (no pun intended) than the previous papers.

What was your experience of the eBay talk and decorators?

I really enjoyed the guys from eBay coming out and giving us that talk. It was very interesting to hear from people in the field we're going into and particularly for me as a senior it was nice to hear things about the workplace and some of the tools that they use and how they work through problems. The tools that they provided us as well for webdev seemed quite useful and I hope to make use of them going forward.

What made you happy this week?

I went to Houston for my parent's 27th anniversary and got to see them for the first time since the semester started so that was very nice. I also got to see one of my friends at Rice and hung out with him and his friends and had a good time.

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

I find that studying on campus is incredibly helpful with motivation and productivity, but a lot of places, particularly in the GDC are quite off in their ambiance. I recommend going to the upper levels of the GDC by the windows are a great place to work, and with the natural lighting and outside hubbub of either students walking on speedway or birds on the terrace vines, I find myself having little moments of mindfulness and appreciation which help me continue to work.