Anusha's Peer Review and Reflection

by Anusha Suresh

08 Jun 2017

So my partner for this project was Alex. His drawing app was pretty well made it looks like. It looks like he spent time thinking about his process, but ran into some similar issue that I did. I think in terms of his process, I think that he spent a lot of time thinking about what he wanted to do, and kind of got lost in some of the frustrations. And oh dear me, did the same thing happen. I mean I started over like twice. But I really appreciate how he tried not to waste time while he got stuck. Going forward though, I recommend more breaks because snacks are awesome. In terms of creativity, Alex included a way for the user to be able to click on the colors as well as choose the numbers to change the colors. I really liked this because I myself had a difficult time even getting one method to work. I also really liked his drag feature. As far as usability goes, I think that he can make some things more explicit. He has a color menu, but it doesn’t appear right away, and the user doesn’t know immediately what other functions the app has. After looking at his process, it seems like he didn’t exactly have one to start with, but he kind of had an idea of the direction which he wanted to go and I feel like that is kind of how I approached it too. I especially identify with something he put in his reflection, where he mentioned that he skipped around between milestones when he got stuck, and I did a similar thing. Sometimes after looking at the same thing over and over again and not getting it is disappointing. Along with that, you are in a time crunch and just want to keep working, so I was totally doing the same thing. In his final app he didn’t include the shapes because I think he got stuck, and I totally get that, because mine don’t work; shapes are really pesky little things. In regards to his code, he seems like he has not a lot of code, but maybe more that what I was expecting. He has it commented as well, but I think that he could consider filling the comments out a little bit, it took a minute to follow his code and understand what everything was doing. I know I have the same problem when it comes to commenting, so I think I will work on that in the future too. But what was really nice was that he left some of his old code in there. It really helps people who are reading his code kind of understand his thought process and shows that he was kind of thinking it though and trying new things. Who knows, maybe something he needs is hidden in that old code. For the most part though his code seems very readable and I like that he implemented multiple modules to help make is main.py a lot cleaner. His code is fairly organized, but maybe using another module or two could help his main.py out more, but it looks fine the way it is too. I think, like me, had he had more tools in his toolbox, Alex would have been able to achieve everything on his milestones list.

I am currently a rising junior here at UNC. I am hoping to be an INLS major, though I am currently a minor. In regards to this class, I have tried programming several times before with no success, but I am determined to learn something from this course. I love the fall, cookies and cream milkshakes(plus points if it's a malted shake), and jokes (good and bad, mostly). Find Anusha Suresh on Twitter, Github, and on the web.