Chapter, Closed; What's Next?
10 May 2023
At First Glance
Admittedly, the majority of my time in school has been governed by the same cycle: memorize, then purge, memorize, then purge. My only goal throughout highschool was to get straight As and get into the best college possible, not to learn. This has only begun to change recently when I started my sophomore year of college and I began to see how the things I learned in past classes bled into the next. Taking ICS 314 has only aided in further changing my perspective.
At the beginning of the semester, I expected ICS 314 to be a simple class where I made pretty websites for an hour or so then went about my day. I never realized until I was knee deep in the course how complicated, yet rewarding software engineering can be. From development environments to software engineering ethics, the various topics I learned in this class have not only given me a greater appreciation for software developers, but also provided me with several new tools I can use both in future software development projects and other endeavors.
Building Up My Toolkit
User Interface Frameworks, although only one of the many topics I learned in ICS 314, is, I believe, one of the most important. Designed to provide developers with a set of classes and interfaces that can be used for defining user interfaces, UI Frameworks have proved very useful in all of the assignments and projects I have done while in this class. Although there are several different UI Frameworks available, most of my time was spent learning how to utilize Bootstrap. The classes provided by Bootstrap made it easier for me to design and style my websites. For example, the Bootstrap container tag I used in several of my files immediately added a border around my text for me to create a nicer look to my webpage – minimizing the effort I would have to put into the styling.
Another topic I learned that I consider to be extremely valuable is Agile Project Management or, more specifically, Issue Driven Project Management that my team utilized in developing our final project – Manoa Recipes. Issue Driven Project Management is a style of project management that utilizes the setting of milestones and issues as well as meetings to advance progress. Through setting milestones and issues, a team is able to break up a project into sections making it easier to manage. Additionally, it makes it easier to designate tasks and gives each team member a set goal for them to reach by a certain deadline. This ensures that steady progress is being made on the project and minimizes procrastination.
Both of these topics not only have use in ICS 314, but beyond as well. Issue Driven Project Management in particular is a method that can be used in a broad range of industries such as business and video game development. It provides a solid framework for efficient team communication and project building that I can see myself using in future classes, as well as any of my future jobs.