.NET Web Development, Week 11

Meeting Purpose

Introduce and implement hash tables as a new data structure in the 11th week of the algorithms course.

Key Takeaways

• Hash tables use key-value pairs and a hash function to achieve near O(1) lookup
• Implemented a constructor, hash function, and set (upsert) method
• Collisions are handled with 'buckets' — nested arrays at each index

Meeting Purpose

Prepare for the .NET module assessment and cover best practices for error handling in ASP.NET Core MVC applications.

Key Takeaways

• Week 11 of the course is Week 5 of the .NET module, with the assessment window opening Wednesday
• Demonstrated custom error handling with a dedicated ErrorController for 404, 401, 403, and 500 responses
• The assessment window is 24 hours, three times longer than previous assessments

Meeting Purpose

Demonstrate and practice assessment preparation for a movie review application called 'The Rewind'.

Key Takeaways

• Set up authentication and a Movie model with CRUD operations
• Created initial views for all movies and the add-movie form
• Established one-to-many and many-to-many relationships between users, movies, and ratings

Meeting Purpose

Review and implement hash table methods and a character-frequency algorithm using a custom hash table.

Key Takeaways

• Implemented get and has methods for the hash table class
• Built a charFrequency algorithm with options for ignoring whitespace and case sensitivity
• Discussed efficient JavaScript techniques like Object.fromEntries and trim()

Meeting Purpose

Implement movie listing and detail views for the Rewind assessment-prep project.

Key Takeaways

• Created a MovieRowViewModel and an All Movies view with title, average rating, and author
• Built a MovieDetailsViewModel and view for individual movie information
• Worked around issues calculating average ratings for movies without any ratings yet

Meeting Purpose

Demonstrate and complete the Rewind demo project, covering CRUD operations, error handling, and best practices in ASP.NET Core MVC.

Key Takeaways

• Completed full CRUD for movies, including a rating system and user profile view
• Implemented custom error pages for 404, 401, 403, and general server errors
• Applied best practices: async methods, model validation, anti-forgery tokens, and AsNoTracking()

Meeting Purpose

Review and discuss implementation of hash table methods and algorithms.

Key Takeaways

• Implemented remove(), keys(), and values() for the hash table class
• Reviewed firstNonRepeatingCharacter() and dedupeArray(), both built on hash tables
• Instructor offered minor optimizations and code-structure clarifications

Meeting Purpose

Recap the recent exam and introduce the agile methodology and user-story format for the upcoming capstone projects.

Key Takeaways

• Outlined an 'agile light' approach for the one-week capstone sprints, with rotating Scrum roles
• Introduced the 'As a [user], I want [capability] so that [benefit]' user-story template
• Set the weekly cadence: Monday kickoff, Tuesday-Thursday build, Friday polish and present

Meeting Purpose

Check in on team progress and provide guidance on choosing a feasible and exciting capstone project.

Key Takeaways

• Emphasized starting from a problem and a specific user persona with a small, one-week MVP scope
• Discussed patterns that work well (CRUD apps, narrow utility tools) versus patterns to avoid (complex integrations, social networks)
• Teams pitched early ideas including a recipe app, a book tracker, and a game backlog app

Meeting Purpose

Review and discuss algorithms related to hash tables, including entries, contains duplicate, and two sum.

Key Takeaways

• Implemented an entries() method mirroring Object.entries()
• Solved 'contains duplicate' by tracking seen values in a hash table
• Solved 'two sum' in one pass by storing each value's complement and index