CS371p Fall 2021: Sruthi Rudravajjala

What did you do this past week?

This past week I attended lectures and participated in the exercise. Since there was no project my course load for this class was very manageable. My other classes and recruiting took up most of my time this week.

What’s in your way?

I have no blockers. I thought try catch blocks were relatively straight forward. Passing by reference versus value was a little confusing because I don’t remember much C from computer architecture and operating systems.

What will you do next week?

Next week I’ll start working on the next project. I want to get it out of the way early so I don’t need to worry about it and I can work on other things. The coming weeks will be very busy for me and I’m worried about managing my time.

If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #4: What Happens to Us?

The content of paper four was not shocking to me. Those stories sound frightening and sum up some reasons why computer science has been unwelcoming to me and so many other women in UT’s CS department. I’m hoping that after reading this paper there are some people who will step up as allies when these types of situation arise.

What was your experience of Collatz, exceptions, and strcmp?

I had a good experience with Collatz. I was able to solve it without too much trouble, especially after we went over optimization ideas in class. I’ve used exceptions in Java but never in C++ so that was a new experience. I also haven’t used try catch blocks in C++ so it was good to learn all the syntax. Overall, besides needing to catch exceptions by reference, the syntax and function seems the same as try catch blocks and exception in Java. strcmp was straightforward and seemed simple enough. The return value stumped our group for a little bit.

What made you happy this week?

This weekend I got to eat some really good ramen and spend some time with my friends and boyfriend which was really relaxing, especially because the next few weeks will be really stressful for me.

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

My tip of the week is to spend some time outside everyday. I’ve found it really helps in reducing my anxiety and breaks up the day a little when I spend all day in online classes.