Week 2 - Markov Text Generation and Weekly Reflection

        Markov Text Generation Assignment Reflection

        Any week where you have two concurrent OOP-related software projects in progress is going to be riveting, challenging, rewarding, and exhausting. I am positing my thoughts hot off the heels of completing the Markov assignment, having passed the unit tests last night and waiting until the morning of 3/16 to face cleanup and proper documentation before heading back into LDPM. Markov was a great assignment to get familiar with collections to as the thought of sticking an arrayList inside of a HashMap and doing some key/value handoffs across different collections and functions is not remotely daunting nor mysterious as I thought it might have been prior to the start of this class. The biggest challenge for me remains to be commenting with Javadoc instead of my familiar low-brow double back slash Java commenting which I love. 

        I wish that I had thought to modify my addFromFile method earlier on in the process as I thought my biggest roadblock in the process was getting randomWord to pass, which was incredibly strange because every different attempt at randomWord seemed equally logically sound. I will be forever haunted by "Expected: Hello, Actual: Hello there.". I was growing paranoid that my randomWord method was not actually touching the passed in String. Examining the MarkovTest file forced me to go back to addFromFile--which was already passing--and brave modifying a working method. I might have misheard Dr. C in the example video and was certain addFromFile called addWord--in reality it was addLine upon looking at the prompt. As soon as I took a shot in the dark and changed the called method, all 10 test cases passed. This speaks to what I appreciate about this assignment style, there is a mad joy in shuffling around from method to method in the assignment document and building out what I can off the top of my head for each section. As soon as I hit a stall following along on a method description, I would move on to the next method and fill out what I could. Then I started testing the methods that required the least help from other methods and took baby steps into getting a few tests passed. endsWithPuncutation was the first test passed as it essentially boiled down to an isolated logic problem you would see on Coding Bat, which is fun!

    Ultimately my proudest moment (whether it could been achieved sooner by reading more carefully or not) was seeing all the test cases pass, it's hard not to get up and take a victory lap around the living space when that happens. Note to self and all: when in doubt, read the method descriptions again! 

Week 1 Work Reflection

        CST338 has entirely lived up to my hopes and expectations for university computer science learning as I feel heavily inundated with new programming insight, context, tools, challenges to grow, ceilings to reach, and visions for the future. We might be a little beyond the Coding Bat challenges as assignments, but I will return to those in my spare time as a snack and to stay limber with logic that doesn't immediately come back off the top of my head. I really enjoyed reestablishing muscle memory with streams and other slick syntax tricks. When it comes to quizzes, I tend to split hairs over semantic multiple-choice answers in general and computer science quizzes can exacerbate that further by the nature of its subject matter. I have no regrets ordering a physical copy of my Getting Started With Java textbook as it has been my number one tactile resource to have next to me while getting reacquainted with Java in a bigger way. My best tool so far has been remaining calm and taking on obstacles one by one. 


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