Done But Not Over
13 May 2022Keep Going
At the start of my spring semester I had the goal of pushing myself and start to decide what I want to with computer science. Now that I’m at the end I still don’t have a clear answer as to what I want to do, but I know I took a step in the right direction and learned a lot from going past what was comfortable for me. From my software engineering class in particular it was like a breathe of fresh air. Learning many different skills and lessons, I wish to share the topics that really changed my view of programing.
Acquiring Framework
Going to my software engineering class we had a clear goal of completing a working web app by the end of the semester. This seemed like an impossible mountain to climb as I had no experience with building a web site, but as the course continued all the pieces seemed to come together and when the time came to do the final project it all seemed possible.
One of the most important lessons to being able to complete the final project was the lesson on frameworks. First, what is a framework? A framework is the support that is allowing web applications to function and work. Almost like a template, it gives a strong starting point and can be changed to the user’s needs. The first framework taught was the semantic-ui framework that made it possible to mimic the look of different websites. Then building off of that we learned semantic-ui-react which is a vert similar framework, but is used to work with react which is a library built to make a website or app look better. I also talked more about what I did and my experience learning semantic-ui in a previous essay I wrote called It’s Possible with Semantic UI.
This lesson on frameworks made it possible to build my final project and gave an endless amount of possibilities to what I am capable of. Prior to this lesson we where able to mimic the look of different web sites, but it didn’t actually do anything. Introducing frameworks brings that ability to have a legit functioning website like other major company’s like amazon, facebook, apple, etc… Like a tool that can do it all the only limiter is myself.
Ethics in Programing?
A lesson that I didn’t expect to learn about in a computer science class was ethics. Initially I was confused on why we should learn about ethics but taking a moment to think about it, technology is everywhere and as it advances it starts to become a core part of peoples lives. For example most people have a smart phone and anything and everything can be done on it nowadays through websites and apps. This gives programmers a great amount of power, a lot more than what I think a lot of people realise, even for me I didn’t think about how much information is on my phone. After realising this and learning about ethics in programming it made me think why this isn’t taught or talked about as much as it should. In all my time learning about computer science I only really started to think about this now and taught me to be more careful in what I create and what I put on my phone.
Next Step
Honestly in the beginning of the semester I wasn’t sure if I could do it. Now that it’s over I proved to myself that it’s possible to go beyond my own expectations. After completing this semester and learning so much from my different classes, I hope to utilize what I learned and keep improving.