The Last Few Months
14 Dec 2022
What I’ve Done In the Last Few Months
Over the semester, aside from teaching me a whole new language and style, I learned a lot from this course. From working in groups, to working independently, from JavaScript to HTML. Within those things that we worked on, there were specific things that stood out to me and had the most impact in my coding experience. These topics include open source software development, functional programming, and coding standards. Without these few topics, I would not be the same coder I am today.
Open Source Software Development
Open source software development, this involves using Github as a open source platform, Intellij as a coding platform, and browser knowledge. Being introduced to Github was truly a different experience. The easability in creating new folders to work in, using other people’s work as templates, and overall functionality is something that all software engineers should utilize when working in groups or even solo work. As for Intellij, I consider it to be one of the best platforms to do all my coding on. Intellij itself has a lot of features that many other platforms did not have, for example, Github integration. Browser knowledge is the last of the three things in open source software development, while the class did not necessarily teach us how to utilize inspect element feature, the class did provide us with the knowledge to understand what it says, which is just as important than knowing about it.
Functional Programming
Functional programming was one of the things that I took a long time to learn. The learning curve for functional programming is very high but only because the sky is really the limit. Underscore was the main utility we focused on in this course. This utility had lots of functions that would help the consolidation of code while also helping to sort through the data according to parameters. While normal javascript was fully capable of doing these tasks on it’s own, the major difference which meant the world was the amount of code that had to be written. Normal javascript functions with about 40 lines of code would turn into simple one or two lines. Learning what each function of underscore was the difficult part, however, there is no rule that says we can’t use the documentation, which is what I had done for majority of the time I used underscore.
Coding Standards
With one of the biggest impacts on the way that I code, coding standards. ESLint in particular for javascript. Since using ESLint, a plugin that corrects the formatting and syntax of any written code, I find myself fixing the code before the program gets to mark it as incorrect. Since the plugin itself displays a unpleasant error when things are not optimal, it is part of my satisfaction to get rid of the mistake at once. Now when I code, I am already familiar with the coding conventions that the program looks for. This has made my code much clearer to read, easier to follow, and debug. Not only has it improved my coding neatness but has also made me pay more attention to detail.
After This Class
After this semester, completing ICS 314, I will find myself in another software engineering course. While it is obvious that I will continue to use these topics that I have learned, even after I complete that class, I will find myself having to use a handful of the things I learned in this class for future projects. Even beyond software engineering, the thought of being detail oriented, using my resources, and working in a group will all be applied to my day-to-day life. I truly value the things that I have learned in this course and believe it is one of the more fun and meaningful classes.