Week 1

29 Aug 2015

Week one of classes is over (last time I’ll probably ever say that again). There’s not really a whole lot to talk about since it’s the first week. We just had syllabus day and then went through some of the tools we’d be using in the class. His class is just as I remembered it in SWE, but for those that have never taken a Downing course before, I’ll give a quick run down of how lecture is set up. At the start of class, he takes attendance and we have a quiz through TopHat (you have a quiz everyday). Then you cover the days material, all the while he randomly calls on people to explain or answer questions about the code. This was my least favorite part about his class (and still sort of is). I don’t really like to ask questions in class, I think I’ve only done that once or twice in my six years at UT, so calling me in class to explain something isn’t any better. But it really does force you to pay attention and to follow along in class. I remember his SWE class having a lot of reading and OOP is no different. I remember one of the SWE books just being really boring and hard to read, so I’m hoping that the OOP book is a lot better. It looks like a lot of the online readings are the same, so maybe I’ll get more out of some of them reading it a second time.

Tip Of The Week: Trello

I remember getting exposed to this in Downing’s SWE class like two years ago, but pretty much didn’t use it at all till this past summer. It’s awesome to use as a software development tool. I used Jira at my internship over the summer, and Trello is very similar (except it’s free). You can track bugs and what progress is being made on certain things. But it has a lot more potential then just a software tool. I have boards for my school work, for personal project ideas, for work stuff, and (embarrassingly enough) for shopping. Here’s a screenshot of my school Trello board. There is also a calendar feature and you can link it up to your iCalendar if you wanted to.