CS 371P Fall 2026: Dhruva Kumar

I grew up in Irving, Texas and Coppell, Texas. Both are suburbs of Dallas. I attended Cistercian Preparatory School in Irving, Texas for high school.

I’m in this class to learn more about object oriented design and good design patterns, as well as becoming comfortable in C++ to have another language in my toolkit as a software engineer.

My expectations in this class are to learn C++, have fun and become better at steering AIs in an efficient manner for the projects. I am excited to put the elephant and goldfish agent methodology into practice.

I enjoyed the first lectures. I appreciate that Prof. Downing puts the notes up in his repo after class, so that I can focus on absorbing the material instead of jotting down every last thing.

I appreciate the quizzes as formative assessments to help me internalize the material as I progress through the course. I think these quizzes will ease the burden of studying all new knowledge leading up to the first exam. It’s always good to have repeated assessments and to “stretch my brain” whenever learning a new topic.

I am not sure how I feel about the cold calling yet, as I have not yet been called upon. I don’t consider the cold calling a bad thing, as it keeps me engaged. If called upon, I want to answer the questions right if possible! (Of course, even if I am wrong, the cold-calling would have been a great learning experience.)

I am very satisfied choosing this class for one of my upper division electives this semester. All the assessments appear fun and reasonable. I liked the Kattis problems-I am trying to apply for internships this semester, and the Kattis problems are in a similar format to the online assessments on HackerRank and CodeSignal. Therefore, I think they are good supplemental practice for my career goals as well.

All in all, I am very satisfied choosing this class for one of my upper division electives this semester. All the assessments appear fun and reasonable, and I am excited to have Prof. Downing as the instructor for this course.