Hello (world)! This semester flew by insanely quickly and it has been quite a journey as I reflect on the past few months. This blog post will be my final entry for this course and I come bearing tea.

What did you like the least about the class?

There were many aspects of this course that could’ve gone better. Firstly, I personally had a fairly awful experience for the first exam we took (technical difficulties with my laptops and me being sick for that entire week) and the sudden news imposed upon us mere minutes before taking the exam that the format had changed, in my opinion, was very unfair. Overall, the content taught in class had virtually no correlation with the actual heart of the course (the group project) and that perpetually frustrated and annoyed me through the entire semester. Learning about intricate Python concepts for the entire first half of the course ultimately bore no relevance to the rest of the course (the project) since most of the Python used for the project I didn’t learn through the class lectures and thus I felt not much pressure to truly understand many topics taught in the class until we had to cram for the exam. Then, after finishing Python, we started learning about some SQL topics that I actually enjoyed but then the lectures quickly pivoted to refactoring, something I felt was wholly unnecessary and a waste of time. Ultimately, I believe that the lecture schedule itself can be restructured into a way that could be immensely more effective for our education.

What did you like the most about the class?

The overall group project experience turned out to be an overall positive and enriching journey. Although there were plenty of development hiccups and bugs I burned the midnight oil to work on and spent many harrowing hours dealing with, I believe that those moments are when we are growing the most as programmers. As I reflect back, I was very fortunate to work with group members where we all got along and worked together well. Furthermore, learning all of the new technologies was the part of the course I was most excited about coming in, and through the project, I managed to gain a solid grasp on understanding several new tools I definitely would not have experienced in other courses.

What’s the most significant thing you learned?

I greatly value the full-stack development experience I had through working on this project. Connecting backend work and frontend work as well as our database and hosting technologies to churn out a fully dynamic website was extremely fulfilling to see. It’s cool to go to the URL and think to yourself, “I did that!”. (Obviously it was a group effort and I think we ultimately accomplished a lot together and we did it pretty well!)

How many hours a week did you spend coding/debugging/testing for this class?

During hustle weeks (the week before and the week of the project deadlines), I would spend at least 5 hours a day working on the project. Ultimately, that would make it around at least 30+ hours a week. During more relaxed weeks, I would probably spend up to one hour a day working on the project and that would make it around 7 hours a week.

How many hours a week did you spend reading/studying for this class?

I spent around 1 hour a week reading/studying for this course. However most of my energy directed towards this course was directed towards the project we had in this course so I ultimately didn’t read very much.

How many lines of code do you think you wrote?

I probably wrote around 1k+ lines of code for the project.

What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

Overall, learning front-end technologies was very useful. JavaScript, React, and some of their respective libraries are now all things I am finally familiar with. Before this course, I only did back-end work and finally being forced to learn front-end (through the form of this course) pulled through! I learned that I truly enjoy full-stack development and now that I have experience in front-end languages, I can hopefully build more full-stack applications on my own too.

What’s the most useful Web dev tool that your group used that was not required?

DB Browser for SQLite was a super useful tool for when we were working on formatting and using our database and the data. It showed our raw data that we got through the APIs we used and allowed us to format it to how we needed it to be in a very user-friendly way. I am immensely grateful for it!

How did you feel about the cold calling, in the end?

There were many flaws in the cold calling system. For instance, there was one class where more than 5 student names were called consecutively and none were present. Many subsequent students who were called had not attended the previous lecture and thus were also unable to answer questions imposed on them. This first led to amusement but quickly devolved into frustration because essentially, class time was wasted and nothing substantial was accomplished. Also, because we knew that there was a rotation for cold-calling so after I was called on within a rotation, I would sometimes lose interest in paying attention to lectures after that until Professor Downing informed us that a rotation had finished and the list had restarted. Ultimately, I personally think cold calling wasn’t a super necessary addition to the class but I completely understand the good-natured intent to keep the class as engaged as possible and it worked for me for a good portion of the time.

If you could change one thing about the course, what would it be?

I would make the content taught in the course more relevant to actual software engineering topics rather than super nitty-gritty Python topics that we could have learned in a 2 minute Stack Overflow search. Learning more about SQL or front-end languages (since most courses don’t really cover front-end in depth) would have been more useful and relevant to a software engineering course.

It was quite a semester. We finally made it to whereWewannabe. That’s all, folks!

What did you do this past week?

This past week I worked on some assignments that were due, met up with some people through WiCS, and attended a friendsgiving! It was an overall decent week. My SWE group met up this week to finish the visualizations for our website as well as refactor things that we needed to fix from the previous phase. There are just a few small things to complete before we will push our final commit! I also actually understood what I was doing in my Algorithms homework this week (which is a first). Lastly, I finished my Networks lab pretty early on in the week instead of hours before which was also a success in my book.

What’s in your way?

I didn’t realize how close we were to the end of the semester until pretty recently and it’s catching up to me; there are a lot of extra credit assignments I need to work on so that I can achieve decent grades in all of my courses. I feel that I definitely didn’t prioritize my classes and studying this semester as much as I did during my previous semesters and it definitely reflected in my grades. However, I feel that I got what I put into my courses and at this point in the semester, I’m fairly satisfied. I just need to be able to power through these last few weeks.

What will you do next week?

Next week I will attend my Monday and Tuesday classes and go home Tuesday evening for Thanksgiving break. I will also be working on several extra credit assignments over break as well as hopefully get a head start on studying for my exams in my courses.

What was your experience of singletons and reflection?

The lectures over singletons went very in-depth, more than I expected them to. Up until now I don’t recall ever sitting in a lecture taught officially taught singletons as the topic of the day so engaging with them more officially was very informative. Furthermore, I learned more about the small but impactful semantics as well as the purposes of why one would choose to use singletons so learning that was pretty interesting as well.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

I recently read this article inquiring if Austin was the best city in America. It analyzed how the tech boom in the city has contributed to the quality (and also cost) of living rising as well as identifying how living here is much more affordable than many other places with similar environments and jobs (basically calling out Silicon Valley). In fact, Austin is nicknamed “Silicon Hills” to reflect the high concentration of tech companies with offices or headquarters here. Furthermore, they emphasized how Austin is one of the top areas for venture capital investment and has a very big startup culture. I’ve noticed that the big reason why Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in America and why it continuously is at the top of all these kind of “best cities” lists is due to the influx of tech. It’s interesting to read about and see especially from our perspectives as individuals in this field and in this city. As one who has lived in Austin for the past 9 years, it’s fascinating to see how Austin has evolved over the years.

What did you do this past week?

This past week was very relaxing! It was great to have a breather week in the midst of a hectic semester. I didn’t have any assignments due this week (due to having a lot the previous week) and no events to plan so I spent most of the week not doing many productive activities. I ate a lot of food, watched The Farewell, attended a WiCS social, and went shopping! Unfortunately I got sick again (for the second time this semester) right after last week’s blog post so I tried taking advantage of this chill week to recover as quickly as possible. It was also a very chilly week so I spent a lot of time indoors. We also began working on phase 4 of the SWE project by refactoring a lot of the code in our repository as well as removing unused old files.

What’s in your way?

Now that my free week comes to an end, I need to get back into the work mindset I was in for most of the semester. I have the usual assignments due this coming week (Algorithms assignment and Computer Networks lab and SWE project work) so I need to get on those and stop procrastinating. Procrastination is a constant demon of mine I am consistently trying to battle.

What will you do next week?

This coming week, I will meet with my SWE group and we will work on (and hopefully finish most of) phase 4. I will also work on my Algorithms assignment and my Computer Networks lab. Basically, this coming week will be a typical schoolwork week.

What was your experience of inheritance?

I thought it was a good refresher. Inheritance is a topic I haven’t truly looked into since CS312 so seeing it again (and in Java!) jogged my memory. However, I would’ve liked to learn new content as well (such as something more relevant to software engineering, such as more SQL) instead of going over a topic that most people in the class had already learned in previous courses.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week is this article I stumbled upon on Medium. It’s a very long article I personally haven’t completely finished yet but based on the steps that I have read so far, the content seems to be well thought-out on how to control your phone rather than let your phone control you. I am also very much a victim of falling into the slippery rabbit-hole of spending hours upon hours on useless and mindless activities such as scrolling through Facebook and flipping between the same 3-4 social media apps. Hopefully if I follow some of the steps here it’ll help me curb my bad habits!

What did you do this past week?

This past week I attended HackTX, took an Algorithms exam, and hosted my final two events for WiCS. I also spent a lot of time working on phase 3 of the SWE project and we managed to finish everything on time. This phase went a lot more smoothly than phase 2 though there were definitely still several technical bumps we hit while trying to get searching and highlighting to work. I also went to my very first football game (ever!) and it was a great choice to go to it; it was tied in the fourth quarter and UT won by a kick made in the last three seconds of the game!

What’s in your way?

I have hit that point in the semester where I’m in a slump and it’s difficult to find the motivation to study and work on assignments to the best of my ability. Hopefully, I can rejuvenate and find the motivation I desperately need since my grades are reflecting how much effort I’ve been putting into my courses this semester (they’re slipping rapidly).

What will you do next week?

This coming week will be the same as most weeks: I will be working on homework. This week, I have a Computer Networks lab to do. I also have daily quizzes in my Software Engineering and Algorithms courses that I have been taking since the beginning of the semester that I will definitely be continuing to do this coming week. Hopefully, I’ll work on some extra credit assignments in some of my classes so I can recover from some sobering grades I’ve recently received.

What was your experience of refactoring?

I personally did not find much purpose in the refactoring lectures. Frankly, I think that some of the refactoring solutions presented to us were redundant and unnecessary and less clean than the supposedly “unrefactored” code that we were told to refactor. However, I myself am a proclaimed “messy programmer” and I admit that all code that I write will always need serious refactoring before it can be submitted and/or passed on to someone else to look over so getting into the habit of learning what clean code can potentially look like is definitely beneficial to me.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

All college students at accredited universities are eligible to create a JetBrains student account and get free access (free license) to all of the JetBrains desktop IDEs. I personally use IntelliJ most heavily, but I have also downloaded many of their others ones including PyCharm, CLion, and WebStorm. They are all really great IDEs for programming and they offer many products for all kinds of development.

What did you do this past week?

This past week I spent time studying for my Computer Networks exam, worked on Algorithms homework, and began working on phase 3 with my SWE group. I also finally decided my summer 2020 plans which means that recruiting for me for this season has finally come to a close; I’m glad that whirlwind has finished and it feels like I can breathe easier now. I also helped coordinate an event for WiCS on Friday and I went to the gym for the first time since getting sick. I feel that I have almost completely recovered from being sick and the only thing that is lingering is a cough. I’m also attending HackTX this weekend so I hope that I get a lot of work done! I do have many personal qualms with hackathons, but if anything, they are are a great environment to feel compelled to be productive because we’re essentially surrounded by tons of other people grinding away on projects.

What’s in your way?

My SWE group members have fairly conflicting schedules for the next few days so we need to coordinate well so that we can finish phase 3 on time by Thursday evening. However, almost all of us also have Algorithms exams early in the coming week we all need to study for as well. Mine is on Tuesday and I really need to hunker down and really study for it efficiently since a lot of topics that have been taught this time around I find are much harder to wrap my head around as we’re diving into more advanced topics that weren’t covered in the Discrete Math class. I need to be strategic with my time so I can study for that exam successfully while also putting in time into phase 3.

What will you do next week?

I will study for my Algorithms exam as well as work on phase 3. I hope that both are successful endeavors! Now that I’m done with recruiting and many WiCS activities are wrapping up, I can finally set all of my sights on getting my grades up (as I have definitely put studying on the back-burner for this semester) and truly understanding the content being taught in class. I also have two events for WiCS this week that I hope will go smoothly. After these two events, I will be done with planning the corporate WiCS events for the semester!

What was your experience of SQL?

I feel that I picked up SQL more quickly than Python. SQL has always been something I’ve been meaning to learn more about but never got the chance to and thus I’ve felt that I’ve been more engaged in these lectures since I feel a personal motivation to get a good grasp on the language. The HackerRanks have definitely helped me gain a greater grasp on most of the keywords and how we would write them and when to use one over the other.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week is the Google acquisition of Fitbit. The announcement caught me by surprise but the motivations behind the acquisition did not. I am interested in following the news regarding this announcement and see how Google leverages this product and technology they now have in their hands. Google now has even more to resources improve their Wear OS technology now that they have successfully acquired them and they have an even deeper reach into the wearables/smartwatch industry, one that is definitely on the rise and a strategic move to go into at this point in time.

What did you do this past week?

This past week, my SWE group worked late nights up until the due date of phase 2 implementing, cleaning, and deploying all of the parts of our website and the project. This phase was very time-consuming and required every member to put in as much effort as they could to succeed. I also worked on my Algorithms homework as well as my Networks project and had a few interviews throughout the week. I also flew out to Seattle Thursday evening and arrived back Saturday afternoon. I am also finally almost recovered from being sick, though the SWE project grind combined with many other responsibilities definitely hampered my ability to recover as quickly as I could have.

What’s in your way?

Right now, I have an upcoming exam in my Networks class that is definitely something I need to be working on and is in my way. I feel that I have been neglecting this course’s content for the sake of SWE and Algorithms. Because of that, this week, my #1 priority is cramming everything we’ve been taught from the first day of school in that class until now into my head in anticipation of the exam on Thursday. In terms of SWE, I think my group and I have collectively decided to take a breather for a few days from working on the project as we did spend an extensive amount of time for the past two weeks (meeting and working nearly every day) to make sure we had all of the necessary parts down on whereyouwannabe.org. Thus, for this course, there’s nothing in my way.

What will you do next week?

This coming week I will intensively study for my Networks exam as well as catch up on a lot of content I feel that I have not been paying close attention to understanding fully. Now that recruiting is winding down, I can focus my full attention on my coursework that I feel that I am neglecting.

What was your experience of the IDB2 project?

My experience with IDB2 was stressful and intense yet fulfilling and successful. My group had a great dynamic and all of us touched multiple parts of the entire project and codebase, minimizing bottlenecks and increasing productivity. I really appreciated how all members were willing to pick up any task that appeared and came up that we had to do. I definitely feel that I’m learning a lot working as a full-stack developer where I touch and work on multiple layers of our project; if I gained one thing from this class, it’s that I really enjoy full stack development and I would be willing to pursue that pathway for my full-time career.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

Postman Learning Center is a great resource for information and tutorials regarding how to run and create particular things using the Postman platform. I was completely unfamiliar with Postman before beginning work on this project, but Postman’s tutorials are pretty helpful and help you hit the ground running.

What did you do this past week?

This past week I worked on phase 2 of the SWE project with my group, studied for the SWE exam, and worked on my Algorithms assignment. Unfortunately, last Sunday evening I got sick suddenly and my symptoms got worse each day as this week progressed. Hopefully everything clears up soon!

What’s in your way?

Being sick definitely has thrown me off my usual routine and study habits. My laptop also essentially broke on me (as both the keyboard and the screen are barely functional anymore) and thus I am transitioning to using a new laptop. Ultimately, I feel that this week has been really rough on my health but hopefully I recover quickly so I can get back in the swing of things fully.

What will you do next week?

This coming week I will work on finishing phase 2 of the SWE project with my group. There also still several tasks we need to complete, such as linking our back-end and front-end. I also have a project in Computer Networks and an Algorithms assignment due next week so I will be working on those tasks as well. I will also be flying out near the end of the week so I need to get a head start on those assignments.

What was your experience of the peer-instruction exam?

Personally, I had an overall unpleasant experience due to my own technical problems that ultimately caused me to take the make-up exam. However, I will focus on discussing the exam format itself.

I thought that the questions were too difficult to do in such a short amount of time for the large majority of students, making the first attempt an overall stressful and unsuccessful experience. The exam also caused anxiety and panic for people due to the time constraints. I personally don’t like that the format of the exam was announced merely moments before we took it, catching us off guard. However, I can understand how the format of the grading may be slightly more beneficial. If someone knows they did not do well during the first attempt, they have a very good chance of redeeming themselves during the second attempt as students can work together with other students and essentially crowd-source solutions. However, I also have the complaint that if I was given more time for my solo attempt, I would have been less panicked and could have focused better on the exam. I feel that the overarching time crunch caused a lot of stress and anxiety that had me not be able to think as straight to complete the exam like a normal one (if I had the original time we thought it would be and thus I could focus better and actually do the problems on time). If I had the normal allotted time, I most likely would’ve had a higher success rate than the 45 minute crunch and then the 45 minute group effort and the average of the two scores.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My tip of the week is to get AppleCare (or the extended warranty equivalent) for your devices, especially expensive ones like laptops. Purchasing a new device is much more expensive and it’s a huge investment especially if your original device breaks within the first 2 years of owning it.

What did you do this past week?

This past week I had somewhat of a breather week. I caught up on some of the coursework I missed due to Grace Hopper and finished some assignments in my other courses. I also had a few interviews that could have gone better (due to me not studying for them and instead opting to relax) but I don’t regret taking a break on interview prepping as it is one of the main stress triggers for me. My SWE group started some parts of phase 2 though we also spent a few days unwinding and recovering from our hectic experience with the previous phase and focusing on our personal commitments and deadlines.

What’s in your way?

The main thing in my way would just be the heavy workload of phase 2. There are many tools and stacks we are required to use that my group members and I are all unfamiliar with but I have faith that we will all work well together in picking up the puzzle pieces to complete this part of the project. I also spend a lot of unnecessary time doing recruiting activities. I hope to finish my recruiting soon and focus my complete and undivided attention on my coursework.

What will you do next week?

Next week my SWE group will spend a lot of time working on this part of the project. I will also begin studying for the upcoming SWE exam on Thursday by looking over all of the material we’ve covered in lectures so far.

What was your experience of CATME’s peer review?

I personally didn’t think the user experience of the peer review was very intuitive. It took time to wrap my head around the way that CATME wanted to input our feedback. However, I think it’s ultimately a beneficial thing to have a peer review so we can provide feedback to our fellow group members. It was also interesting to read the feedback my group members wrote as well!

What was your experience of peer-instruction quizzes?

I thought that they promoted collaboration and discussions between students within an environment where everyone would be benefiting from the interactions. However, the grading is definitely something to get used to as it depends on the class working together.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

If you have a MacBook or a Macintosh, be wary before upgrading to Catalina macOS, the most recent macOS update/release. They stopped supporting 32-bit apps and thus if you still have potentially older versions of applications, they will no longer run. Thus, many apps are now incompatible until the developers of the application adapt them to fit the new OS.

note: my previous posts’ weeks were off, so I skipped numbering this my 5th blog post so I could be on the right week: 6.

What did you do this past week?

This past week I crammed for my Algorithms exam, took my Algorithms exam, ran directly to the airport right after the exam, and flew out to Orlando, Florida to attend the Grace Hopper Conference. Right after landing, I traveled straight to a dinner held by the company that sponsored my attendance for the conference. I spent my Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings and afternoons attending the career fair and interviewing and in the evening, going back to my hotel to work on the software engineering project due on Friday (after Professor Downing pushed it back). On Friday, I flew back and surprised a friend for her 21st birthday. It was definitely one of the busiest weeks of the semester.

What’s in your way?

All the classwork and material I missed out on because I was at the Grace Hopper Conference is definitely something in my way. I will need to catch up on reviewing class notes and slide decks. I also spilled soy sauce all over my backspace key on my laptop so now I must figure out an efficient way to fix my typos and other mistakes. I also hope that since soy sauce has tons of salt in it and salt is a conductor of electricity, my laptop doesn’t unexpectedly short circuit on me at some point.

What will you do next week?

I will catch up on learning the material I missed as well as begin working on phase 2 with my group. I will also be continuing recruiting and waiting to hear back from various companies. I’m also facilitating another WiCS corporate event with an FoCS company so I hope that goes well and that there’s a good turnout!

What was your experience in learning about the different Python containers, iteration, comprehensions, and map?

Because I was attending Grace Hopper, I wasn’t able to attend the Wednesday and Friday lectures. I will definitely be reviewing the missed material on my own time so I can catch myself up to speed. However, learning about Python containers was very informative for me. There were many semantics and things to note within each one to consider when using them or choosing which to use so I think that’s important to know.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My pick-of-the-week is the newly announced Microsoft Duo phone. It’s Microsoft’s venture into pushing a dual-screen phone into the market, though it’s not supposed to be released to the public until winter of 2020. They announced it early so that developers have time to begin developing apps for the new platform. I am curious to see how developers will go about designing for this new interface and will be earnestly keeping up with the release to see how successful it turns out to be.

My non-technical tip-of-the-week is that when you can, always book a direct flight. Having layovers added lots of unnecessary stress to the itinerary as many times, you could miss your connection or have to run across four terminals to make your connection.

What did you do this past week?

This past week I worked on various homework assignments and had a few interviews. I also attended a few recruiting and organization events. My group met and kicked off our project by getting our project’s proposal approved and beginning the front-end of our project to meet IDB1’s deadline this coming Thursday.

What’s in your way?

I think what is in my way is my Algorithms exam on Tuesday, the many tasks my group and I still have to complete for IDB1, and the Grace Hopper Conference I will be attending from Tuesday to Friday. I will effectively be missing all of my classes starting from Tuesday afternoon to the end of the week. The amount of content I will be missing will definitely be overwhelming to catch up on over the weekend. Since my exam is on Tuesday, I won’t be able to contribute too much to my SWE project until after that, but that will be after I land in Orlando for the conference. Therefore, this week will definitely be one of the busiest weeks of the semester.

What will you do next week?

I will be studying for my Algorithms exam on Tuesday, finishing up the SWE project with my group, and attending the Grace Hopper conference. Because I will be flying out to Orlando right after my exam, I will be missing a lot of class. Thus, I will be taking a lot of time to catch up on all the material and assignments I miss.

What was your experience in learning about for in, iterators, and reduce()?

There were so many little semantics within each one that I’m sure I would’ve overlooked if I had attempted to learn these topics on my own time. It had also been a while since I dealt with iterators so it was a good refresher. Most of the information I learn I usually relate to its equivalent in Java, the language I am most proficient int, but reduce() was something fairly new that I couldn’t immediate connect to something similar in Java. It was definitely interesting to learn about!

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

Attending the biweekly programming competitions hosted by UTPC is a great way to interview prep! Last school year I attended every single one and I feel like each competition has a great variety of questions to do ranging from easier ones to the more difficult ones. Also, each competition’s questions align to a particular theme and it makes each question exciting and memorable to do! (not sponsored)