CSUMB Week 10 (12 March 2025 - 18 March 2025)

As this week comes to a conclusion, I have completed the Markov assignment. I would say the challenges I've faced were not based on coding that required substantial theories but rather silly mistakes. For example, I've spent close to 3 hours trying different approaches as to why my addWord method was not being passed in the test. Turns out, the method was fine from the beginning. The test wasn't passing because I forgot to create a constructor and hence words were not being initialized correctly (slaps forehead).

I did, however, learn something very new that I never tackled before: regular expression (aka Regex). I learned this to try and trim all the whitespaces out in a given line of texts. The regex approach (assuming if I understood Regex) seemed simpler, so I started to learn Regex syntax. Some of the initial learning sources felt very esoteric and confusing; however, once I found the right source, it started to make sense. This video in particular helped tremendously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvryGBPmNl8

CSUMB Week 9 (5 March 2025 - 11 March 2025)

Discuss the process of solving the Coding Bat challenges.  A major part of software design is thinking about how to approach a problem with the tools we have at our disposal.  What were the steps you took to solve some of these challenges? 

As I was busy self-teaching myself Python, it's been about 5 months or so since I touched JAVA. This became evident since I threw myself right at the Coding Bat challenges. Syntax wise, the struggle only lasted about 20 to 30 minutes or so before I started remembering all the JAVA basics.

Once I remembered the fundamentals, the coding challenges weren't much of a challenge. Most questions only took 1 or 2 tries/attempts. I was already accustomed to LeetCode styled questions (due to warnings given to me by every software engineer that I should familiarize myself with this). The only category that gave me some problems was the "String-2" module. I tried to stick true to the "intention" of the module's lesson and only use methods that were previously mentioned/taught by Coding Bat (e.g. charAt(), substring(), length(), and equals()). I made a conscious decision not to use AI to guide or help me. The tools that I limited myself to use was browsing through the StackOverflow forum website (which surprisingly felt useless most of the time. Most answers just seemed to be filled with SWE holding much disdain for each other - why is that?). 

Due to this, it took me a bit of time to figure out certain nuances such as realizing I must use '' instead of "" when using the chatAt() method or that == cannot be applied to objects but .equal() method can (but that == can indeed be applied to Strings [which are technically objects] but with the understanding that it is pointing to the reference only rather than the characters being the same). 

After I solved the questions, I took a look at YouTube tutorials to see how others did it. It made me realize how much I liberally used a "flagging" structure when a simple well placed && operand could have simplified it. 

At the end of the day, this was a great warmup and exercise. After all, what is a better way to force memory retention than through frustration and being stuck? Ha. 

CSUMB Week 8 (26 Feb 2025 - 1 March 2025)

Part 1: Review Other Teams' final video projects

Brain-Computer Interfaces - Past, Present, and Future

From the discovery of EEG to the advance of Neuralink, the video goes in depth of the history and technicalities pretty well. The production value of the video is sufficient. I would caution on the usage of lo-fi music throughout the entire video as their purpose is to relax and often help put people to sleep. 

Deepfakes Explained: The Dark Side of AI

Great explanation on Generative Adversial Network. I especially liked the analogy of the painter and the critic. The video did talk about the damages of deepfakes, but I would have liked to saw some examples to drive home the point that it is indeed happening already (e.g. news clippings and other references). The portion of the video that tested our ability to spot AI images was a great way to interact with the audiences. It is also clear great effort was placed into the editing. Overall, good production, good content, great video. 

The Metaverse (Long)

The video does a pretty good job of explaining what a metaverse is; however, I would like to have seen more discrepancy between the concept of metaverse and videos game such as that of "Second Life" which ticks a lot of the requirements of what a metaverse may be. Is it simply a role-playing game or an early adoption of metaverse? 

As for the video production, I feel that the overall quality could be improve through adding music and a bit more editing. As it stands, it is less of a video and more of a slideshow presentation. 

Part 2: Keep Up with your Learning Journal

I am exceptionally happy with our group effort on our video projects. We have shown great initiation, concise communication skill, and on-time accountability. I could not have asked for better teammates. Made the project much more fun to work on. Perhaps I enjoyed it too much since I spent a greater amount of time than I intended on storyboard planning and editing. 

Overall, everyone pitched into the project sufficiently whether it be through scripts, research, editing, or voicework. I'm not so sure on what else we could have done to improve our collaboration.