What I Know Now (Software Engineering)
05 Sep 2024
Prior Knowledge of TypeScript
Before taking this course, the only languages that I had knowledge in were Java and C and C++ because of the previous ICS course that I have taken. Learning TypeScript comes with a bit of a learning curve but gradually gets easier as time goes on and I am able to get more practice in. I believe that one of the harder parts of learning Computer Science is differentiating the different languages and being able to properly switch between them as you need to. For example, I entered university with no prior knowledge of any language so my first introduction to coding in general was through learning Java in my ICS 111 lecture while, my friend who previously learned Python over the summer before that semester knew a bit more about coding in general but the information was still slightly different than what we were experiencing in class. However, with my previous knowledge and what I have learned in this short amount of time with TypeScript, I would say that TypeScript is a good programming language from a software engineering perspective because using it makes a program easier to manage and maintain. Being that software engineering revolves more around the design and development of applications rather than the code itself, I believe that using TypeScript makes it easier for the programmer to create and develop these projects.
Athletic Software Engineering: Good or Bad?
When it comes to the idea of athletic software engineering, I believe that it may be a good goal to strive for later on in a course, however, there should be a very solid foundation of the topic at hand before trying to achieve this goal. Athletic software engineering refers to the action of learning to code fast rather than over an elongated period of time. When people think of the word “fast”, people including myself, think of the quickest route possible. By using this mindset people believe that they can take shortcuts and interfere with the overall quality of the code to get there faster but as we read, we learned that this approach of athletic software engineering isn’t necessarily about getting from point A to point B in the quickest way no matter what, but focuses more on making sure the author is consistent and fluent in their programming abilities. For me personally, I would rather not participate in this because I work better when I am not under the pressure to perform quickly and instead work better when I am allowed to work at my own pace. I feel as if I were to be pressured to work quicker, I would go into auto-pilot and disregard many of the more minor details that might make my work better in an attempt to get it done quicker, making it more stressful than enjoyable.
WODs
Practice WODs are very useful in my opinion. It gives us as students time to practice what we’ve learned and try to gain a deeper understanding of the material first-hand. Given the freedom to use AI or work completely independently is also nice because it allows people to gauge what they think they can or cannot do in terms of the time limit given but also gives an extra resource to either help a lot or slightly assist in the way we work.