Week 12

What did you do this past week?

This past week consisted of mostly team meetings and designing. The team sat down and planned for what refactoring we needed to do this week. We also looked at the user stories given to us by another team and decided who would do which story. Tony and I also made user stories for another team to help them improve their website.

 What's in your way?

Not much is in my way this week. We have a lot of work to do on refactoring the website but I think it will go relatively smoothly. I also plan to start studying for the test soon and reviewing all of the course material to try to really understand everything. I did really well on the last test, but I feel that this material is more challenging so I will need to study more for this exam than the last. I find some of the refactoring concepts particularly challenging. It is easy to refactor when we are told what needs to be changed, but I think it could be very challenging knowing what to refactor if we are not given as much direction initially.

What will you do next week?

I plan to work on the website, refactor some of the back-end code, and maybe start studying for the final. I also want to finish reading the Refactoring book because I find some of those concepts interesting but I have not had time to read much in the past few weeks.

What's my experience of the class?

The class is going well! I am a little disappointed to hear that the professor will not be in class this week! I was hoping to learn more about refactoring, and am slightly disappointed that the professor is leaving for a week now that we have finally gotten to the section of the course I am interested in.

What's my pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My tip of the week is to check out Heroku here: https://signup.heroku.com/?c=70130000000NcJNAA0&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=SEM%20-%20US%20-%20Bing%20-%20Search%20-%20Branded%20-%20EXT%20-%20Desktop%20-%20All&utm_term=heroku&utm_content=General

Heroku is a hosting platform similar to AWS EC2 but has an unlimited time length free tier and does not require a credit card to sign up. So anyone can publish their site on Heroku and experiment with web software development without having to worry about getting charged!

Week 11

1       What did you do this past week?

This past week was consumed by finishing the third project phase which involved searching, sorting, and filtering. Most of the logic for these features was completed last weekend or the previous week, and the majority of this week was focused on polishing these features and creating a nice user interface for them on our website.

2     What's in your way?

Nothing is in my way right now. Since we don’t have a project due this week, and the test is a few weeks away, I do not feel like I have much to worry about for this class this week. If anything, the only thing I am concerned with is that I might not have time to do the readings this weekend.

3     What will you do next week?

I want to get caught up with the ‘Refactoring’ readings. I have missed the past few readings but I plan to read the rest of the book this week because I find it very interesting and would like to learn more.

4     What's my experience of the class?

This week was a pretty good week. I felt that everyone in my group worked hard on the project, and that we are all proud of the website we have created. I enjoy the parts of the class where we get to focus on making the website and presenting what we have created to the other groups. I think this class has helped me learn a lot about teamwork, presenting, and communicating my ideas effectively.

5     What's my pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My tip of the week is to check out brilliant.org here: https://brilliant.org/computer-science/

This website has some excellent resources and courses for all sorts of computer science topics from algorithms to software engineering. Although it costs money to get the premium version of the site, I think it is worth it because they do a great job of explaining complex topics in very understandable and simple ways. This site makes me wish I could have just taken computer algorithms online instead of at the university because I understand the topics a lot better when working through them on this website.