Final Week

          The final week of class is finally here (and the final week of my college career nonetheless)! Class was laid back last week since I watched two other groups present on Monday. I think in general everyone did a very good job on the final project and on the presentations. It became apparent that some groups were at a great disadvantage because several of their members dropped out of the course after the second midterm, which was very unfortunate.
          My group is presenting tomorrow, after which all is left is the final midterm. I'm extremely anxious about this next exam since the last one sent my head spinning. I've been trying to predict what kind of questions, both reading and programming, that could appear on the exam, but I'm at a loss, however, since the structure of the lectures seem to have changed from previous iterations of the course. Previously the course seemed to be focused more on different ways to write methods, but now the examples are more program/class centric.
          Overall, I probably learned more in this class than almost any other CS course I've taken. If I had to make a few suggestions, I wish that the tests would cover more topics. I found that the class covered a wide range of topics and programming techniques, but each of the first two midterms were highly focused on one or two ideas. I don't think the tests do the class justice to ignore many of the topics discussed. Also, I wish the tests had actually made us program Java rather than Haskell, since half of the class was taught in Java but we were never tested over it. I know that we have been tested over Java in previous classes, but there were many Java techniques I had never learned before this class. I think it would be okay to test a little bit over Haskell, but not half the exam since it was not a main focus of the course or the lectures. This seems to have been one of the main complaints from many students in the course.