layout: post
title: Week 1
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1. What did you do this past week?

    In the first lecture, Dr. Downing went over the syllabus and then he went on to discuss a simple c++ program. Last semester I took his SWE class, so I noticed some changes from his last class. The extra credit blog this semester is worth much more, which people had commented last semester that it wasn't worth enough.

    So far, the overall content of the class is fairly similar with the beginning of SWE. First we talked about assertions, unit tests, and then Collatz and the first project will be about Collatz.

2. What's in your way?

    I need to set up my working environment. I'm not sure if I'll use the lab computers, my computer or the docker image yet.

3. What will you do next week?

    Next week I'm guessing that the project will be assigned, so I plan on working on the project. I also need to read the readings.   

**Tip of the week:** Many times when programming, I struggle with giving a variable a meaningful name. It's very easy to give simple, but non descriptive names like *a* or *num_tmp*. One of the goals of this class is to teach us how to program with other people reading our code in mind. So, here's a [general guide](https://a-nickels-worth.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-guide-to-naming-variables.html) on how to give good variable names.
