Parts of this summery were taken from previous weekly blog posts

The Lectures The lectures have been very useful. I feel like I have learned a lot about C++ and object oriented design in general. Calling on people is actually a really good way to keep people engaged and create an environment where people are more likely to answer questions. The quizzes sometimes seem like they focus too much on tiny details and trick questions but they do force you to study and pay attention which is good. Overall I think this class was really useful and I think Downing does a great job structuring it.

The Projects I enjoyed working on all of the projects. Following the workflow and getting to work with TravisCI, Github, Doxygen, Clang, Google Tests, and having to follow the workfow was very different that anything I had done in any other class and was probably great practice for industry. I also feel like I have gained a really good understanding of C++ which I’m sure will prove very useful.

The Exams The exams were my least favorite part of the class. They seemed like they more more designed to test if you remembered small details from the lecture of if you happened to include them on your page of notes then your overall grasp of the course material. I heard that previous years had to actually write code for the exams and I feel like this would have been better since it would have better reflected what you want us to take away from the class. I also didn’t like the the select multiple answers questions on the second exam. If you are going to include these I would at least put more on the quizzes so we know what to expect. I spent a lot of time during the exams just trying to find the differences in blocks of code. It would be nice if you could highlight what was changed so I didn’t waste time on this.

The Extra Credit It was really nice that you offered so much extra credit. I thought the speakers were interesting although I would have liked to have known about them further in advance. The partner bonus was I good way to get people to work together (I wouldn’t have worked with anyone if I didn’t know about it). Some people just used the same partners all semester though since the requirement to change partners wasn’t enforced as far as I could tell. The blog was a nice way to reflect on things but it’s hard to tell if it helped me at all.

Summery I enjoyed OOP and I thought I got a lot out of it. The projects seemed like the closest thing to industry work that we will get in college and I thought Downing was a great lecturer. I will definitely look forward to taking SWE or maybe even proctoring this class in the future.