After doing Assignment 1, I think my programming skills have improved in the way that I have developed a more efficient approach to writing and thinking of code that I need to write. In the beginning of working on Assignment 1, I was pretty lost, so I was reckless with my code, writing out lines of code that looked right to me without properly having a clear goal in mind. I realized this and tried to change my approach by setting time to stop and think about what I need to do and how I am going to do it, as this is more time efficient and effective than randomly trying out different lines of code, hoping it will work.
While doing Assignment 1, I realized that there were many concepts that I still did not fully understand, which ultimately costed me. I had a difficult time applying what we learned about if statements and for loops, however, I think that this Assignment helped me gain a better grasp of how to use them. I also need to get in the habit of writing comments. I noticed that I had a tendency of writing the code first, and then the comment, which was not very efficient. As a result, at some point, my code was all over the place, and I had to take the time to organize everything so that I could understand what I was actually doing.
I have definitely learned a lot from doing the WODs, especially the Store1 WOD. I was glad that I struggled with this WOD, as referring to it along with the mistakes I made during the WOD helped me to have a decent start at doing Assignment 1. I can’t say that the journey was smooth, but I would have struggled more if we did not do the Store1 WOD. I have not been able to complete a WOD without doing it more than twice, but this repetitive aspect was beneficial in the long run.
The labs have helped me learn new concepts in class and apply them with various coding tasks. Notably, Lab11 was very useful for completely Assignment 1. However, we were not able to finish the lab in class, so this delayed me from being able to actually progress with Assignment 1. We had to do the rest of the lab on our own, so I was not able to fully understand certain concepts that were crucial for Assignment 1. When I work on the remaining portion of a lab at home, I am almost always unconfident in my answers. Assignment 1 really put my understanding of the labs to the test.
I learned a lot from Assignment 1 and it’s probably the most challenging task I have faced in college so far. Way prior to starting Assignment 1, one night I randomly read a ton of E4 essays from previous ITM352 students on the MIS Portfolios page. I did this because I knew for sure that I was going to struggle on Assignment 1 after hearing how challenging it is, and I wanted to prepare myself by reading students’ reflections on it. A majority of the essays I read mentioned the importance of starting early. So I started early, but my progress was alarmingly slow. I was hoping that the Assignment was not as difficult as I thought it would be, but it exceeded my expectations. I never realized how exhausting sitting in my chair for hours straight, staring at my laptop dumbfoundedly could be.
This assignment has definitely reinforced the importance of starting early and truly understanding essential coding concepts. I often felt hopeless, blindedly trying out different lines of code, just praying that it will solve my problem, without actually understanding the purpose of that code and what it will do. As a result, I utimately did not have much time to experiment with CSS and various designs, which was what I looked forward to the most. Hopefully I will be able to add more to my design for Assignment 2. Before actually starting Assignment 2, I will try to have a clear idea of what steps I need to take to avoid future confusion and thoughtless coding.
I think that having screencasts for the WODs that come later down the road would have been helpful, as I had to figure out what to do on my own, which I know is important, but this led to even more confusion at times. And for days where we don’t finish the labs in class, I think the class could be improved by providing a screencast or a document that guides us on how to complete the tasks in the lab.
All of the resources provided and assignments we did in class (WODs, Labs) helped. I appreciated the flow of the WODs and how they gradually grew in difficulty. I received a lot of help from my friends, which I am very grateful for. I also joined a couple of office hour meetings, which were also helpful and often resolved some of the problems or questions I had regarding Assignment 1.