CS373 Spring 2021: Vincent Huynh

Week of 9 Feb — 14 Feb

1. What did you do this past week?

I completed and turned in my Collatz project this week. I also started working on my ray tracing project for CS 354 and implemented the Whitted illumination model, the Phong shading and interpolation models, and tri-mesh intersections.

2. What’s in your way?

I’ve been staying up very late for the past few nights working on my CS 354 project, and I’m looking forward to the weekend, although I’ll still be implementing more features and finishing up to submit it next week. It also has been freezing cold this week, and my room’s window is not particularly insulating. I’ve set up my heater, but the air gets very dry as a result. At least I have a reason to wear my jackets indoors now!

3. What will you do next week?

This weekend I plan to get most of my ray tracing project completed so I can have a few flexible days before the submission date on Wednesday. Next week I am planning to shift gears to focus more on CS 373 in order to contribute good ideas to the group discussion for the next project. I will be checking CATME and Piazza as well.

4. If you read it, what did you think of the Pair Programming?

I read a very similar article (it might have been the same one, actually) last semester in CS 439. My experience with pair programming has been very positive, and I would highly recommend it. I also find that pair programming has some similarities with continuous integration, especially in that they require good communication between programmers working on the same code to greatly improve efficiency.

5. What was your experience of types?

I did not know much about tuples and frozen sets before this week, but now I know much more about them. From this week’s lectures, I am able to categorize types by different criteria such as being mutable, hashable, indexable, or iterable, and so on. I also know more about how lists and dicts work under the hood to provide amortized O(1) efficiency.

6. What made you happy this week?

I discovered a new YouTube channel for listening to music while I study. The channel Monterey Bay Aquarium uploads videos of sea creatures accompanied by lo-fi hip hop. I like to use my computer monitor while having the videos play full screen on my laptop. It’s like a miniature fish tank on my desk!

7. What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

I saw a YouTube poll by Clement Mihailescu titled, “Do you code while listening to music?”, and I think it’s an interesting question. I listen to music when I’m coding something I know how to implement already and it’s just a matter of typing it in. Music without words is generally less distracting in my experience. When designing or learning, I find it much easier to have the music off and talk about it.