Assignment 3 and Labs

    This past week has been incredibly hectic for me with the effects of the TA strike on this course. Unfortunately I have been unable to complete lab #9 this week and will have to work on it some time next week along with lab #10. With the work that I have had a chance to put into lab #9 I must say that I am quite confused. The file "bt_functions.py" imports BTNode from a file we were not given, I copied the BTNode class we were shown in lecture and attempted to use this for the lab which gave rise to a whole new set of problems. Comparing two BTNodes for equality is proving to be rather annoying as there is no __eq__() method in the BTNode file posted in Diane's lecture materials, I get the impression that I should not need to use it. This being said, I cannot think of another way to assert the equality of two nodes. To anyone reading this, do you think I should just write an __eq__() method for BTNode, or is there some other way to proceed with the lab?

    Moving on to Assignment 3, I have chosen to work on option A and I'm extremely excited to build off of my minimax algorithm. My partner (Saman) and I have decided that, to make the most of our learning in this assignment, he will be working on option B. Our idea is to meet up after we have both completed a version of the assignment and to compare, deciding who's might be better to hand in. We have both made great progress so far, I have already implemented the memoization and myopia strategies and am now just trying to make sense of the description for "pruning". I think this assignment has been and will continue to be extremely effective in both testing my previous knowledge of recursion and helping to develop my confidence in writing more complex recursive functions. I feel that even if the TAs continue to strike and this assignment goes unmarked, it will certainly be a fantastic exercise in preparing all of us for the final exam.

Somewhat unrelated, I've had this song stuck in my head during all of my work on A3... I think it's fitting.