CS 373 Spring 2022 — Week 10 Blog, Joseph Muffoletto
What did you do this past week?
The most important task I accomplished was notarizing the Mac build for my game development research. The project was long overdue, and it was an incredible relief to finally complete it. The rest of the week I spent between my assignments, tutoring, Longhorn Racing, social organizations, and my plants.
What’s in your way?
I am quite behind in my Verification/Synthesis course. I need to complete my paper presentation, my project proposal, and problem sets.
What will you do next week?
This week is a busy one. From 7 AM to 6 PM, Thursday to Sunday, I will be volunteering as a track marshal for the MotoGP race at the Circuit of the Americas. As such, I need to complete all of my assignments in the days prior.
What did you think of Paper 10. Why getter and setter methods are evil?
It is definitely a worthwhile design consideration. OO languages, such as Java, are notorious for their boilerplate bloat. Getters and setters are a large part of that. More importantly, accessor methods can make code rigid — imagine a getter method on a variable that needs to be changed from an int to a long. Nevertheless, the rigidity of accessors can be avoided if they are properly abstracted. Instead of returning a built-in type, choose to return a user-defined type. Have the user be dependent on an object’s use, not its implementation.
What was your experience of functions, regular expressions. and relational algebra? (this question will vary, week to week)
I thought the lectures were interesting. It was really helpful to learn the rules for function arguments. Popular python modules tend to use “*args” and “*kwargs” quite often, and I never quite understood how to use them (aside from seeing how others used them).
What made you happy this week?
Finishing the Mac build for my professor! Huge sigh of relief
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
Make peace with things you cannot control! Accept the reality of whatever it may be. If you cannot change something (e.g., the past), then do not waste your energy fighting it.