Week 4: September 28th to October 4th

What I Did This Week

- Clarified my knowledge about talkeditor.py in written form.
- Learned about QModelIndex and understanding the apply_changes and update_talk methods in talkeditor.py.
- Learned about QPersistentModelIndex, added click_talk method to talkeditor.py. Made PR #605.
- Learned about the Diff utility, so I would have a better idea of how Git worked. Added functional save/discard/cancel window to Talk Editor. Learned how long it takes for commits to be pushed and tested.
- Took screenshot of save/discard/cancel window for PR #605. Finished functionality for save/discard/cancel prompt, including having the prompt come up when the user decides to add a new talk. Learned how to set Gedit up so that pressing "tab" creates 4 spaces instead of a tab character, thus potentially saving me dozens of seconds of time in the near future.

What I Plan to Do Next Week

- Finish whatever changes I will inevitably need to make in PR #605.
- Take another look at the Getting Started page, with reference to the checklist in Issue #442. Consider possible changes to be made, with a focus on making the instructions clear and simple.
- As long as I'm on a roll with the Talk Editor, see if I can get anywhere in solving Issue #532 (Talks should not be unselected after being modified through the table view).

Expected Problems

- The coming weekend is Thanksgiving, and I'll be traveling to celebrate with my family. I am probably not the only one facing this conflict.
- I have a bunch of assignments due in the coming weeks -- I will work hard to balance the work in my different courses so that I don't fall too far behind in any of them, including this one, but it will be difficult.

Discussion

Whenever I write one of these blog posts, I make sure to look at my past blog posts as well as my Project Proposal to get some idea of what direction I'm headed.

Last week, I said that I would look at talkeditor.py and see how far I could get in solving #501. I think I did pretty well -- whether my solution is approved or not remains to be seen, but as far as I can tell, the solution does everything I intended for it to do. The solution came together much more quickly than I expected it to. Remarkably, in the schedule in my Project Proposal, this was the week I half-jokingly said I would have a "magical epiphany" which would solve whatever issue I was working on, and it seems like that's almost what happened. That said, I know I need to be prepared for the possibility that my changes aren't very good or that they conflict with other people's work -- this can be a harsh business sometimes.

I suppose it would have been nice if I had done a bit more communication with my team mates. I want to make sure I know what they're working on, so that I don't step on their toes -- and similarly, I'm starting to see why it's important to let them know what I'm working on, so they don't step on my toes. As far as I can tell, no major conflicts have come up so far, but I want to make sure it stays that way.

Apparently midterm evaluations are coming up. It's hard to enjoy being evaluated, as much as I know it has to be done. All I can say is, I have tried as hard as I can to be productive while keeping my blood pressure at a reasonable level. I am aware that my progress might seem slow, but the fact is that I have made progress. At the beginning of the semester, I was intimidated the prospect of editing preexisting code, and I had no idea how to use Git or any of the Python modules involved with Freeseer. Now I have some idea how to use Git, I have some familiarity with Qt, and I've made some of my own changes to the code with no sign of stopping.