Week 4

For this week, one of my assignments was to reflect on completing my Markov program, and compare my reflections to those of my teammates.


Who did you work with? You can work with up to three people

For this exercise, Luis Hernandez and Edward Torres.


What was your strategy for solving the Markov assignment? Did you start writing code right away? Did you plan it out on paper?

I typically read the instructions in the prompt first to get a mental picture of how the program should work, and how the different parts of it interact. I also reviewed the lab video since I couldn't attend the session live. When reading through the prompt, the driver file, and the test file, I also try to identify which methods or classes need to be written first. I usually choose to implement methods that don't depend on others first. Depending on how the tests are written (if the methods or classes are too dependent on each other), I often wait until the end to run the test file. The interdependency can sometimes make running tests earlier tricky.


What was THEIR strategy for solving the Markov assignment?

Luis: Read through the instructions and commented out methods he planned to implement. He found the debugger very helpful. Worked on the methods in the instructions from the bottom up to find the methods that don’t depend on others. Did a rough mental plan. He starts typing right away. Doesn’t run tests until the end.

Edward: Same as Luis, but adds todo comments within the commented out method. He tends to just start typing, then if he encounters a problem, writes it on paper to understand it. Works on debugging one test at a time. He reads through the driver file to see how the program should function.


How would you change your strategy having worked on the assignment?

I don't feel I would change my strategy for this particular assignment. I think it worked reasonably well.


According to your classmate(s): how well does your code follow the Google Java Style Guide?

I placed my header at the very top, which goes agains the guide. But other than that, I documented all methods with comments in accordance with the style guide, and my classmates feel the rest of the file should meet those guidelines as well.


Did you know you can automate applying some of the style guide rules?

Yes, I was aware that can be done, but hadn't gone back to check how it’s done with IntelliJ. I'll try to do that going forward.