CS371p Spring 2022: Kaustub Navalady
Where did you grow up?
In the early years of my life, I grew up in Flower Mound, which is a suburb of Dallas, Texas. During my middle school/early high school years, I lived in Chennai, India, which is closer to where most of my family lives. I came back to Flower Mound in my later high school years.
What high school did you attend?
For the most part, I attended Flower Mound High School. Go Jags!
Why did you come to UT?
I knew that UT had an excellent Computer Science program, and it was also a great value for money considering I was eligible for in-state tuition. Furthermore, when I visited Austin, I really enjoy the young vibe of the city and found it to be a nice change of pace from a suburban lifestyle.
Why are you majoring in CS?
I’ve always taken an interest to tech/computers since a young age, and I was born in a generation when the Internet had really gained some traction to be able to experience all it has to offer. Furthermore, CS provides amazing job opportunities in software engineering, which is not only an intellectually stimulating career path, but it also compensates well.
I personally am very interested to see/contribute to tech pertaining to the Metaverse and AR/VR, as I see them as the next major steps in the human experience.
Why are you in this class?
I would like to deepen my knowledge of C++ (and be able to navigate a large codebase), learn/reinforce software engineering best practices and tools, and practice OOD and learn various design patterns.
How much C/C++ do you already know?
Not very much. Although I have used C++ in Dr. Gheith’s Operating Systems class, we did not use any standard libraries, so my extent of knowledge is that of “C Syntax” and some additional tidbits about classes and pointers.
How did you like the first lectures/cold calling?
I enjoyed the first few lectures as they were very application-oriented and straight to the point. I found cold calling to also be valuable in keeping everyone engaged and helping students assess their knowledge of the material.
One thing that could have been useful was to perhaps briefly mention how certain tools work under the hood; for example, when demonstrating how to use Docker to setup an environment with the necessary C++ toolchain, one might question how Docker allows one to run Linux/Unix utilities on one’s Mac/Windows machine.
What’s your pick-of-the-week/tip-of-the-week?
A really good way to understand how git branching works is to use an interactive tutorial such as:
This helps associate the git commands with a mental image so you can be more confident when you do git related tasks and not be daunted by having to do things like merge, rebase, and resolving conflicts.
