What a whirlwind of a week!

Professor Downing started right off the bat with content and has no intention of stopping. After the initial review of the syllabus, we went straight into examples of how C++ is different from Java as an object-oriented language. One piece of advice that I can give to my readers right now is: COME TO CLASS! Downing goes line-by-line through the content, ensuring everyone in the class is on the same page regarding its functionality. For an added bit of fun, however, he calls on students alphabetically to make a guess on what is happening on each line, so if you're not in class it will be noticed (and you will miss important content).

So far I've found the pace to be a little fast, but fairly reasonable. You'd better grab that extra cup of coffee before class, though, because if you zone out even for a second you're already behind. I also suggest taking notes in class as best you can and then inserting them into your own copy of the class examples. Someone in our class posted their version of this on Piazza and it has been extremely helpful, so I intend on duplicating that practice on my own.

In general I've found Professor Downing to be extremely straightforward and entertaining to learn from so far. It seems he knows a lot about industry and will be pushing us this semester to be prepared for that big bad world out there. I'm looking forward to more anecdotes and debugging rants. ;)

Tip of the week: Potentially a more obvious tip, but for those looking for great tutorials on web development, I recommend Codeacademy's course on AngularJS: https://www.codecademy.com/courses/learn-angularjs

See you all next week!