One of the most important things that I learned in this class was the idea of UI Frameworks. UI Frameworks are basically tools or foundations for designing User Interfaces. In our class, we used UI Frameworks for websites such as html, css, React, etc. Before taking this class, I took good UI for granted. Although I have seen some pretty bad websites in my lifetime, nothing will have prepared me for the amount of gratitude I have for websites that feel intuitive and pleasing to the eyes. Moreover, taking this class has made me realize how lazy I am with different aspects of life. If I wasn’t married, I would probably be a person who has a desk, mattress, computer, and a chair in my living space. Being able to see the effects of good UI has opened my eyes and caused me to grow past the bachelor mindset.
As a person who grew up with a screen on my face for a huge period of my freetime, my attention span has clearly taken a hit which affects my day to day life. For example, when reading manga, I often find myself just skipping text completely if it seems predictable. One of the other things that I realized was how hard I found it to read documentation. As someone who likes to skim past a chef’s life story in the introduction of a recipe on a website, reading through documentation proved to be a challenge because there really wasn’t much to skim or skip at all. Even on the timed tests that we had during this Software Engineering course, which would only have 1-2 lines of text per requirement, I would end up trying to skim it and ultimately missing out on key parts of the test causing my program to inevitably crash. All of these repeated failures forced me to slow down and read each line of instruction slowly.
As a beginner in programming, the thing that bothered me the most was definitely feeling like I was writing ugly code. A lot of the classes that I had taken up until now had a focus in teaching key-concepts such as iteration and recursion, however it seemed like every single teacher wrote their brackets in different places. With the introduction of Coding Standards through ESlint in Intellij, I did not feel as lost as I was. Every single time I get rid of a red squiggly line, I feel a sense of relief and accomplishment wash over me. The most convenient part is, errors which I’m unfamiliar with can be googled for clarification. Also, since every single person adhered to these standards, it made it much easier to locate mistakes in code and to understand it quicker.
This brings me to the final thing that I learned about Software Engineering. There isn’t a single person that should do everything. The biggest thing was getting everyone on the same page. When I started my final project, I wasn’t even in Hawaii at the time. This led to me being completely lost and out of the loop, even when I tried to message my group. When I got back, I quickly realized that we didn’t even have a concrete plan yet either. After talking together about what each person would do, a lot of progress was made. Additionally, accountability can be taken since each person could be tracked. Being able to work together and communicate was something that I didn’t know would be important in Software Engineering. I honestly thought that everyone kinda put their noses in their computers for 8 hours a day.
Perhaps the biggest motivator for me even choosing what to study in college is money. Money is an enabler that can feed me good food. Money can take me to places I’ve always dreamed of. Money can open up opportunities which would be locked behind poverty. Money can literally make it easier to make more money. Throughout this semester, news headlines were flooded with many different controversies such as mass-layoffs from tech companies which made the future so uncertain. But what stood out to me most was the Israel and Palestine conflict that is still ongoing. Specifically speaking, I saw Google Software engineers quit on the spot because of their refusal to be compliant and an accomplice in the destruction of Gaza. When I saw this on Reddit, I expected them to be lauded for their bravery in being able to fight for what you believe in, but also for abandoning a dream job. However, all I saw in the comments were jokes about how a job position was opening up. I also love money, but these people were honestly deranged. I learned that some people really have no morals at all, and that I’m not the worst kind of person among the crowd saturating Computer Science.