Adding To My Engineering Brain
I walked into this class with some coding experience in languages such as C and C++ not knowing that the main languages that were taught in this class were Javascript and HTML/CSS. Me being me, I instantly panic and feel so far behind. But with the educational technique called athletic software engineering, it helped me get up to speed. There were a few topics that I learned about this semester that interested me:
User Interface Frameworks
The user interface framework is a set of classes and interfaces that define elements to help create a stylized and professional looking website or application. Most UI’s provide a structured code for components such as align elements, tables, grids, and color schemes. The UI that I enjoyed using was Bootstrap 5 because the documentation of the code was easy to navigate and understand. Bootstrap 5 is the most popular frameowork for building responsive sites. On their documentation site, they even have a starter template to show how to set up your HTML page. I actually used what I learned from this subject to code my own website from scratch for my senior capstone project class. It is hosted on Github and the live website is deployed using Github pages.
https://uhm-scada-lab.github.io/
Agile Project Management
Agile Project Management is a different approach to working on software development projects. It ensures that issues can be acted on quickly and changes can be made at each stage or milestone of the project. This allows the team to work quickly and collaboratively within a certain timeframe or other restraints. We used this approach in our final project teams. We separated our project in milestones. In each milestone, we created issues that needed to be addressed before the deadline. This allowed our four-person team to work on one project and get it done in a timely manner. The idea of having open issues helps show the team what needs to be done, what is done, and what can be rolled over to the next milestone. It also forces us to document our project so that it is easy to follow in an outsider’s eyes. I also introduced this approach to my senior capstone project class because they will all be collaborating on the website that I built for future semesters. They will create issues and use Github’s version control to collaborate on the website.
Ethics in Software Engineering
Although this subject was not a main topic in this class, I believe that ethics in software engineering is very important to learn as a new engineer. It teaches us that we have to maintain integrity and independence in our professional judgement. As engineers, we must always put safety first by providing high-quality software that benefit everyday people. Software engineers must write code that will only benefit the public, meet professional standards, and provide high-quality software. I will definitely use what I learned in this class in future jobs and careers. I believe as engineers, we have an obligation to make sure that technology is used for good.