Week 5 Learning Journal Markov

1. Who did you work with?

I worked with the Replicant Collective team members: Austin, Alexis and Tim. We met in a discord call to discuss each others Markov assignment by screen-sharing on discord. 

2. What was your strategy for solving the Markov Assignment?

Similar to how I did the project 1 LDPM, my strategy was to work along the walk-through that Dr. C provided and create TODOs for all the missing methods and implementations. After I would review the prompt that was given and begin from the top of the documentation down to the bottom while double checking if all the methods were implemented correctly or have some functionality. I would test the methods separately to see if its working correctly. For this assignment in particular I began writing code right away, as usually I would write some pseudo code and brainstorm how the class will be used. I did not write anything or plan on paper.

3. What was THEIR strategy for solving the Markov Assignment?

Alexis had a similar strategy for solving the assignment as all she did was read over the prompt and began coding right away. Austin and Tim also did the same method by reading the prompt one by one and creating shells of the methods and fields. Tim noted that he created a lot of comments before hand as a way to brainstorm how the method would function, essentially creating pseudo-code within the javadoc.

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

I don't think I would have changed my strategy after working on the assignment as I thought my process was well optimized. If I did have to change my strategy there would be involvement with more diagrams such as flow-charts and method functionality sketches, along with some pseudo-code. In terms of improving my code, there was a section that involved concatenating strings. Something I would have done to optimize it is to incorporate string-builder objects.

5. According to your classmates(s): how well does you code follow the Google Java Style Guide?

According to my teammates, my code followed the style guide formally. There were some intricacies in the comments as many of them did not have complete sentences so they were difficult to understand. Overall, the variable names were easy to understand, the indentation and white-spaces were at a minimum, and JavaDocs were well put together. I already knew that you can automate the style guide rules in IntelliJ, after every new implementation I would ctrl-alt-L to reformat to the google java style.