What did you do this past week?

Last week I got started the second OOP project about Australian Voting. My group member and I have made some decent progress. We got a basic solution implemented, but now we must optimize it. In class we delved deeper into pointers and started looking at iterators.

What’s in your way?

The voting project is the main thing in my way right now. Getting the basic solution was quite easy, but optimizing has been tricky. We got our code to run quickly, but it now fails a few cases. After finishing the optimization, we then have to worry about making the acceptance tests. Getting 1000-2000 lines of tests seems time consuming.

What will you do next week?

Next week for OOP I would like to finish the project as soon as possible. Work has been piling up in my other classes, so I must make sure I manage my time efficiently. Also, I plan on going to the career fair on Tuesday.

What’s my experience of the class?

The quizzes have been quite challenging. Even when I do well on them, I’m still a bit shaken since I have to work quickly. Besides this, the lectures have been great. We’ve spent a lot of time going into the detail of pointers in C++. While I’m familiar with C, learning references in C++ introduced some confusion. Fortunately, our lectures in OOP have cleared most misunderstandings.

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

My tip of the week is related to the career fair. First of all, you should go if you don’t already have an opportunity lined up. Even if you don’t get any offers, the process of talking to recruiters is a great experience. So, if you do go my advice would be to not immediately talk to your target company. For me, the first few conversations don’t go well, so it helps to “warm up” then talk to the company.