This week in CST 334 was a nice introduction to the course and a chance to get everything set up.

I started with the orientation materials, which helped me understand how the class is organized, what kind of assignments we’ll be doing, and most importantly what kind of late work is allowed.

It made things feel a bit less overwhelming since I now know what to expect. Additionally, I also REALLY appreciate allowing late submissions.

One of the first things I then did was submit my GitHub username, which I’m guessing will be used to keep track of our code and projects.

The Docker Setup Lab was pretty interesting. I’ve seen it in use in production environments at various companies before (usually with things like k8s), but I never have seen it used for fun in a regular programming class.

I guess it does make it ALOT easier to debug and run the code on different machines.

Since my computer is a windows machine, I just use WSL instead of docker, because it is a whole Linux OS and on top of that, it has a TON of performance improvements such as no windows defender which means filesystem access is near hardware level speeds.

I also took some time to go through the optional C tutorials and lectures. I already have experience with C, but going back over pointers, memory management, and the syntax was pretty helpful as a refresher.

All in all, I think this class is a pretty nice balance of niche and familiar and should be a welcome additino especially after our SQL class which relied on centuries old applications like mysql workbench to run.