Week 11

Now, this was a week. First project of the class down and the midterm. There was plenty of code to write, and it honestly almost didn't feel like there was enough time to write it all, never mind test it. But, it was written, it was tested, and it all worked out in the end. 

This week, in place of the usual status update, Dr. C had us review out peers' code for a previous assignment. I was able to help out a student that was apparently in a different cohort to my own. Alex was taking Software Engineering with my cohort. The other person I got a review from was Sharmaine. From the both of them, I learned that I was better with the instructions for the program than I thought I would be. The code ended up being clear and concise enough for them to follow along and see what was going on. Though some of my comments on what the code did didn't quite line up with what was being printed in the output. There were a few suggestions, making certain variables instanced for one, or using a placeholder constant instead of typing it out directly, This last one I can agree with, adding additional basic checks and preconditions to the code to ensure nothing is called out of order and risking the program crashing. 

More preconditions would've been helpful, as it would have made debugging for the unit tests a lot quicker and simpler. While I can't quite call out any one test as being particularly difficult (most of the issues I can remember were from the project we turned in this week.), the tests were simple enough in themselves to pass. Most of the difficulty was in debugging; making sure that what was being asked for by the tests was what they got and not any sort of errors from the compiler or a variable value of the wrong type. The tests themselves covered the full set of methods and, honestly, they did a great job of it. I would ask if they could be made a little less nitpicky, but coding in general is a very nitpicky venture. Being able to scrutinize details, especially while annoyed at something not working the way it should, has always been a shortfall of mine. I wish I could be more level-headed when dealing with these sorts of moments. After the dust settled, I did wonder if my teammates were having similar troubles but I wasn't in any mood to ask. Too soon after annoyance, too busy enjoying the fact that it was over and done with. I take my victories where I get them. Writing the code itself was the easy part, once I worked out what needed to happen in each method. 

If I'd known that there was a specific criteria for the code review sooner, I would've stuck with that but I didn't. Maybe that's for the best, though. Even with a clear set of things to look for, there would be something important that I've missed.

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