Week 3 Project 01 Code Review

Journal Prompt Reflections

• Was any part of the code a struggle for YOU?

I particularly struggled with getting the defense and attack points tests to work properly as I was not following the instructions for the subclasses, I set the individual monster values but just kept failing to read “USE THE GETTERS/SETTERS”  from the method description. My toString test was failing due to somehow accidentally trying to resolve damage and health in that method, I was reading the wrong method description while working on it. Figuring out how to code up the type mashup between defender and attacker was tough as well.

• Was any part of writing the code easy for YOU?

Ironically, I felt comfortable getting some code together based off somewhat plain/not-completely-technical language, I just cannot stress enough that I kept misreading descriptions. As OOP was a distinctly spooky aspect of programming for me in the last couple years, that is being well taught right now so troubleshooting/writing code for extending a class and passing values in around different spots in the files came fairly naturally.

• What is your biggest victory?

Firstly, every test that passed felt like my biggest victory. The first round is particularly memorable as the code was not running at all and I had many methods partially built, so the first time it ran 3 tests passed and I didn’t expect that many to work at once. 

PDF Questions 

1. Who did you work with? The rest of Team 8 A.K.A CIGN Consulting: Ethan G, Keshab N, and Matthias I. 


2. What improvements would you make to your code/what was suggested? 

    My teammates pointed out that my brackets were inconsistent, I had unused imports, incomplete logic, unused variables, and unused methods. All part of my process, haha. I tend to keep it pretty messy until things are working and then carve away the chaff and filth.

3. Which unit tests were the hardest to pass?

    I had problems with a good few of them, typically always due to my inability to properly read the method descriptions. The first that come to mind are the attack point tests as well as defTest. The string of methods that comprise the mechanism of the pokemon attacking each other are so interdependent that none of those tests passed until all of them passed together, so I was flying a bit blind on those.

4. 

    A. How do the existing tests function and could they be improved?

    Having just started to get into examining test case code, I feel that it generally puts the project through its paces, I think it could account for more factors, like somehow creating negative damage or feeding unexpected values in. Granted if this was a packaged code inside of a console game, users would be hard pressed to put it much further past its paces than what the test does.

    B. Do the existing unit tests cover the full range of Book and Reader functionality?

    I am not sure the full extent of what this means, there is not much a reader aspect here unless that means something like subclasses reading from the superclass in which case there is a fair amount of bouncing back and forth across files, covering the methods/variables created.

    C. How would you change the unit tests?

    I would try to break the game by either making HP come back through negative values or feeding it data that causes the code not to compile unless the programmer accounts for that.

1. What did you struggle with?

    Trying to trust the process and just coding each piece as best I could and trying to research strategies instead of just REREADING the method description and realizing the strategy was right there in the description, imagine that. I also kept accidentally calling takeDamage twice and was very confused at my output for a long time in the cleanup phase.

1. What did one of your teammates struggle with?

    We all struggled with defense points and attack points versus attackMax and defenseMax.

    

1. What are you most proud of on your submission for Project 1?

    This is the biggest project I have done in IntelliJ so far so I am just generally proud to have mostly been able to just cut a rug on it and get through it and troubleshoot it on my own aside from some consultation from Polina and my prolific Java textbook from a community college class.