CS371g Summer 2021: Carter Boclair
CS371G First Blog Post
Some Background on Me
I was born in Texas and I grew up in Roanoke, which is slightly outside the DFW area. Eventually, I went to Northwest High School in Justin and graduated as the valedictorian of my class. While there, I started taking CS classes (though precious few were offered) and was a part of a media arts and technology academy. As a result, I got to experiment with a lot of different software for a lot of purposes. I participated in some of the CS UIL competitions for my school, though my “favorite” extracurricular would have to be a small game club I set up. Regardless, by the time I graduated I decided I wanted to continue learning more about computer science and media technology and so here I am.
UT and CS371G
I ended up going with UT for a number of reasons. Not the least of which is that it would be relatively less disruptive to my life outside of academics compared to some of my other candidates. Furthermore, the UT CS program is on the up-and-up. It was already good when I arrived and seems to be improving with each year. I am majoring in CS, as I alluded to above, because I have experienced some of the great creative potential CS can offer. It isn’t entirely dry math and algorithms. While I could have majored in some adjacent topics and gotten similar results, I figured CS would be flexible enough to fit any number of specific applications and careers. As for this class in particular, I’ll be frank: I’m here for prerequisites and because I need upper-division CS hours. However, that doesn’t mean that this class doesn’t seem like it will be both engaging and useful. It’s still a little early to tell, but this class seems like it will at least be interesting. My only expectation is that I will grow my knowledge of C++ and good programming practices. Beyond that and I’m willing to see where the class takes me.
My Level of Experience
I’d say I am fairly competent at C++. I don’t have the most exposure to some of the more unwieldy additions it contains but the way I think of programming fits far better with C++ than some other languages I have been exposed to (sorry, haskell). As for web programming, I am largely inexperienced in that field. I have had passing contact with Javascript but wouldn’t be confident on any finer details. As for python, I don’t often use it but it isn’t difficult to use outside of occasionally finding out they decided to give a new name to a perfectly fine keyword from other languages.
Thoughts on the Class
The class does seem, in a number of ways, slightly idiosyncratic. To start: the grading system is, to put it a certain way, interesting. However, the first lecture went fine and assuaged some of my concerns about the class. The cold calling is still something I am dubious about but I’ll give it more time before I write it off.
Miscellaneous
What made me happy this week? I had a nice, fairly slow-paced week, which always makes me happy. I enjoy being able to actually give tasks the time they need to breathe and be completed in a satisfying way. Beyond that, I’ve been getting into some new games and communities so that’s always fun and I am truthfully excited to see where some of my summer classes take me.
As for my tip-of-the-week, here’s what I can offer:
I don’t know if I speak for anyone else here, but I have a scope problem. I should really hire myself a project manager because far too often I let projects outgrow my abilities and, as a result, I burn out. I find a really good way to avoid that is to give yourself hard constraints you simply cannot break. So why not try making a game for the Gameboy? The limitations offered are both helpful and charming in a way that having basically infinite resources on modern computers can sometimes fail to be. So if I’ve made an interesting pitch then go ahead and check out gbdev where you can find tools and guides to try developing on the Gameboy yourself.
And with that, it seems like I’m done for this week. I hope you have a lovely week until next time.