CS 373 Spring 2022: Bruce Nguyen: Final Entry

How well do you think the course conveyed those takeaways?

I definitely think that the course conveyed those takeaways very well and really provided me with a great opportunity to expand on many skills. I think that they really did help me in growing as a software developer.

Were there any other particular takeaways for you?

I definitely think that another major takeaway from this class for me is that communication is vital for progress and success in a team environment. As my project team consistently kept in touch, we were able to effectively progress through our tasks.

How did you feel about cold calling?

I really enjoyed the cold calling as it allowed me to have a meaningful conversation about the topics covered in class and helped me in furthering my knowledge of these topics. I think it also allowed me to feel more involved in the course overall.

How did you feel about specifications grading?

I really liked the specifications grading system of the course. I think that it allowed me to evenly focus on all components of the course and was straightforward overall.

How did you feel about help sessions and office hours?

I was able to get a lot of help in the help sessions and office hours overall. I definitely think that they were very useful resources for this class.

How did you feel about the support from the TAs?

The TAs answered all of my questions well and responded fairly quickly. I definitely felt supported by the TAs overall.

You should have read five papers that describe SOLID design: Single Responsibility, Open-Closed Principle, Liskov Substitution, Interface Segregation, and Dependency Inversion. What insights have they given you?

The SOLID papers definitely provided me with a lot of insight on developing safe and correct Object Oriented Designs. Now, I believe that I am much more knowledgeable about techniques for effective software development.

You should have read two papers that advised minimizing getters and setters. What insights have they given you?

I am now definitely much more aware of the issues that can arise from having getter and setter methods which could possibly expose implementation details and cause future problems for a program. I now try to avoid utilizing them unless absolutely necessary in certain cases.

What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

I definitely thought that Postman was a very useful tool to test and analyze APIs. I am definitely looking forward to utilizing Postman in the future.

What’s the most helpful Web dev tool that your group used that was not required?

My group used Recharts to effectively and efficiently create very detailed charts and graphs. I definitely thought that the tool was extremely useful for developing these visualizations.

How did you feel about your group having to self-teach, many, many technologies?

I think that learning many new technologies took up a lot of time but was extremely rewarding and allowed us to grow as a team of software developers. I really enjoyed being able to learn more about many technologies overall.

In the end, how much did you learn relative to other UT CS classes?

As there were so many required components, I definitely thought that I learned a bit more in this class compared to other classes. I also think that this class provided me with an opportunity to experience a work environment similar to that of software engineers in the technology industry.

Give me your suggestions for improving the course, but apologies in advance; specifications grading will remain.

There weren’t really any major things that I would suggest changing, but I do think I would have preferred receiving assignment feedback within a shorter time frame. Overall, I really enjoyed this class! Thank you so much.