CST338: Software Design, Week 5

HW02: Markov Reflection

Who did you work with?

I worked with Cody Hopkins, Justin Martlock, and Claudia Fierro for the peer code review and discussion.

What was your strategy for solving the Markov assignment?

My strategy was to stub out the structure of the class and methods based on the prompt, making sure I hit all the required functionality. I focused on getting it to compile first, and then started fine-tuning and testing against the unit tests. I would normally sketch out some logic beforehand, but since the prompt was so detailed and I wasn’t entirely sure how the end result was supposed to behave, I dove in and followed the instructions step by step.

What was their strategy?

Justin said he read the prompt carefully, looked at the unit tests, and just started coding with very little preparation. Cody had a similar approach, saying he read the prompt and implemented the missing methods as he went. Both seemed to take a more code-as-you-go approach, which worked well for them.

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

After seeing how straightforward the unit tests made things, I think I would have trusted the tests more and spent a little less time overthinking the structure early on. I also realized how helpful it would’ve been to write a few of my own simple test cases during development, especially to test edge cases like punctuation and empty inputs.

According to your classmates, how well does your code follow the Google Java Style Guide?

My teammates said they thought my code looked great and didn’t suggest any changes. Based on my own review and what I’ve learned from reviewing their code, I believe my code aligns well with the Google Java Style Guide. I followed the naming conventions, spacing, indentation, and added complete Javadoc comments for each method and field.

Did you know you can automate applying some of the style guide rules?

Yes, I haven’t used them yet, but I definitely plan to integrate one into my workflow for future projects so I can catch small style issues more quickly.