Experience in 414
11 Dec 2021
The Beginning
After working on the project with my fellow group mates in 414, I have to say, it was definitely NOT what I expected! When I first registered for the class I thought it was going to be very similar to how ICS 314 was taught. Such as having many exercises, homework, essays and a final project that encompasses all that we’ve learnt in the class. But 414 was absolutely nothing like that. First day we met up and was told that we have a group and was informed of the type of project that we will be making. So the first few days we pretty much did nothing. Then after viewing the demands of the client, I thought to myself, “wow this isn’t that bad”.
Getting Started
After we got settled in and can finally start the project, I encountered some difficulties, mostly because I got a new computer and forgot to set up my intellij to the same standard as 314 was. After I got that settled, me and my groupmates started adding a ton of features, sort of blindly because of how we weren’t completely sure of what the clients really wanted. Other members in other groups will agree with me here, that we were not completely sure what each ‘variable’ the client wanted was meant for and so we had a lot of discrepancies in meeting those requirements.
In the Middle
After the first 2 milestones, each milestone took pretty long to be due, if I recall it took 3-4 weeks for milestones 1 and 2 to be due and so me and my groupmates were in no rush at all. Then after the 3rd milestone, everything started to be due in 2 weeks which at first freaked us out. This was also the time when our other courses started midterms and most of the hardwork was coming our way so I am not going to lie, I sort of fell behind. (Very thankful to my group members during this period of time). After getting adjusted to such a change I got back into it and at the same time we started making huge improvements to the project. There were still many discrepancies with what the client really wanted and how they explained what each variable meant. I feel like for next project, we should have the clients explain what each detail is meant for and have a rough outline of what they wanted, as I feel this will greatly help us have a clearer image of what we are developing.
In the End
After finally putting on our finishing touches on the project, I feel like we did a great job. After attending the last customer meeting, the client also seems pretty satisfied with what we created as well which makes it even more satisfying. I am always satisfied in finishing a coding question/homework after spending a lot of time doing it and so right now I am feeling really good. Overall, this course was not what I expected it to be, but in the end I think its a decent course and was pretty fun. I got to meet new people and work on a pretty decently sized project so I am happy.