Week 4 Project 1 Review

With whom did you work?

I worked with Replicant Collective members, Austin, Lex and Tim. We organized a day to gather in a discord call to review our code via share screen and uploading them on discord to review.

What was your strategy for solving the assignments?

My strategy for the the assignment was to read through the prompt and just start implementing the first method I saw and build up from there. The project check-ins really helped me establish the auto-generated portions of the program such as the setters and getters. I began the self-created methods by writing stubs for them and creating javadocs during the second check-in. I think a good example of how I proceeded with the project was implementing attack() because within this method are calls to other methods such as getPhrase(), calculateAttackPoints and takeDamage(). In order to get the attack() method to work those other methods need to be implemented. So when the prompt mentions to call getPhrase I would move and work on getPhrase()'s functionality. It would eventually keep building up until all the methods were fully functional. I actually did plan the assignment on paper, although only for the inherited class because I essentially forgot how inheritance worked for a minute.

What was THEIR strategy for solving the assignments?

Lex and Austin began working on the assignment as early as possible. Their strategy were to also create stubs for the methods that needed to be self-created. Austin mentioned that he had re-read the prompt multiple times and just started coding right away. Tim said that he would start the simple functions that don't need calls and then move on to the larger and complex methods. All of our strategies involved working from the top of the prompt to the bottom, and to make things fully functional in between.

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

I don't think I would have changed my strategy since the one I used was pretty optimal. If anything I would want to plan out the program with some pseudo-code but with the limited amount of time I have it would be best to just brute force the prompt. Right now I am having high success rate with just following the prompt thoroughly.

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

They noted that my code followed the Google Java Style Guide to a tea. They did say that maybe there were small spacing issues such as white-lines between the fields but other than that it was very well formatted. I do want to note that I have been using the auto-format by configuring the editor to use the google style scheme. I enjoy auto formatting with ctrl-alt-L every time I finish something. I did mention to my teammates that they should do the same.

What was the most challenging part?

The most challenging part was getting the output correct. At first I had trouble getting the correct outputs to display when certain monsters were attacking each other. There were points when working on the assignment where the monster being attacked instantly died and fainted because something was wrong with my attackModifier and defense calculation. I also discovered issues with my takeDamage() because the if/else conditions weren't organized correctly to meet certain damage thresholds. I'm glad I fixed those before submission.

What was the most interesting?

I think the most interesting part about the assignment was the use of an Enum to determine the different objects monster elemental type. In addition, the utilization of overwriting toString. I don't remember having to output an object with something like toString in C++ so that was interesting to discover, maybe I just don't remember doing so.

What are you the most proud of?

I am just proud I got the assignment done before the due date. I essentially had all of it done before the weekend so I was able to enjoy myself riding my bike and playing basketball with some friends. In terms of something in my program I was proud of, I think just getting the toString to correctly output if a monster had multiple elemental types; I definitely could have improved it with a string builder to properly append the strings for the output.

How did you celebrate completing the assignment?

I don't drink much alcohol but usually after completing any big assignment or large workload I crack open a cold one. After this assignment I drank some Kirkland lager and a bottle Soju, just relaxed and watched some NBA.