CST 338 - Week 3 Reflection - Jotto Code

 Jotto Code Review

This week, we were tasked with reviewing our group members' work on our code for Jotto. I worked with Luis Hernandez, Victoria Ramirez, and Guillermo Zendejas. We met as a group on Thursday to discuss Jotto and assigned each person to review another’s code. I reviewed Guillermo’s code and received feedback from Victoria.

Team members worked with

Victoria mentioned that all my tests passed and it was well put together when it comes to overall code and Javadocs. There were some comments that I forgot to delete before submitting. She mentioned that lines 190 to 196 and 206 to 224 can be removed to improve the clarity of the comments. 

Improvements to Jotto

The improvements I would make to the Jotto code would be to use an alternate method for obtaining a Jotto score in getLetterCount(). After reviewing Guillermo’s code, I realized that I could have used a HashMap to compare the words. I used a char array and a nested for loop to compare each character and another for loop to check if the string itself had duplicate letters. The method that Guillermo used looked more clean than what I did. I would also go back and clean up the comments that I made per Victoria’s suggestion. 

Hardest Unit Tests 

The hardest unit tests to pass were pickWord(), guess(), and getLetterCount(). For pickWord(), I struggled with correctly setting up the if/else statement. For guess(), I struggled with keeping track of wordGuess and currentGuess. I had them switched at times, and it was not working the way I wanted it to. For getLetterCount(), I struggled with counting duplicate letters and adjusting the Jotto score from there.  I eventually figured it out after attending office hours with Polina. 

Jotto Test Review

The current Jotto tests do test the full range of Jotto functionality. Each aspect of the game was tested, and they provided useful information about the expected outcome of the test. This was particularly helpful when it came to debugging my code. 

Personal Struggles

I struggled with utilizing the debug feature in IntelliJ. I was unfamiliar with how it worked, and it took me a while to figure out how to use the features to debug my code successfully. This assignment really helped me become more comfortable with using the debug feature and how to use it with unit tests for my code. 

Team Struggles

After our discussion on Thursday, it looked like most of our team members struggled with the same methods that I did when completing the code. Some of us also struggled in the sense that we were learning more about Java as we progressed through the assignment. 

Proudest Moment

I was proud that I passed each test! While creating the program was stressful, I felt more confident with Java and IntelliJ. I am also proud of the work process that resulted from this process. I developed a habit of writing code on paper when I reached my limit on the computer. Once I have tried all I can, I take a break, do some research, and sketch out a general code structure that I can use to solve my issue. I will also test the code I have by creating a value chart to check what might happen. This has helped me tremendously when it comes to completing this homework assignment as well