Day 16

I learned a lot today from my IPM. I was given feedback on my Euler 12 problem, my OCP presentation, and my coin-changer kata. I had a lot of feedback on things I could have done better that I’d like to take to heart for future iterations.

First and foremost, I learned to not assume I have things completed without double-checking, it was a mistake I made today that I’d like to not repeat. I “finished” my Euler 12 problem early on in the week and assumed it was done well enough and didn’t think twice about it, choosing to focus on other things for the week. When the day of IPM arrived, it wasn’t solved well enough to be acceptable, I should have asked Gina about my solution instead of just assuming it would be acceptable. Ultimately, it was a good lesson on communication.

My other two demonstrations went pretty well and were accepted. At the end of the meeting, Micah gave me some good pointers in the form of metaphors on how I should conduct future IPMs. They bogged down to 1. treat my demonstration as a show/presentation that I hold the flow over while my mentors can sit back and watch. 2. demonstrate each story with a story card sandwich. This means show the story card to introduce my demo, show my demo, then come back to my story card to wrap up that story. 3. communicate ahead of time if I’m not going to finish my work on time.

After my IPM I jumped into the next iteration. I first finished off Euler 12 to give an acceptable solution that is fast enough. That didn’t take me too long. I was happy that my run time went from hours to seconds. I ended the day by getting started on my Tic Tac Toe game in clojure. I wanted to implement a GUI this time around, so I spent the rest of my day dabbling with seesaw to use in my project when I come back to it tomorrow.