It’s been a long four months but the journey through ICS 314 is coming to a close. Looking back on it, I’ve learned many different aspects of coding such as Javascript and HTML. I also had my first experience with User Interfaces in the form of Semantic UI. But I felt like the most important experience for me in this class was the Athletic Software Engineering Aspect.
It was a difficult task to keep up with the demand, coupled with the fact that I had to wake up at six in the morning in order to make it to class on time. The pressure was reminiscint of an actual work environment with strict deadlines that have to be met. One of my friends even fell too far behind on the WODs and dropped out of the class about a month in. While I was a little saddened, I knew it was an unfortunate inevitability that some people would be unable to keep up with the workload. About a month or two into the class I began to notice a difference in my overall performance; the more I perservered and practiced, I found myself knowing the proper code to write and being able to write them out much faster than I did when I initially started the class. My overall programming skills have improved drastically. At times, I found myself spending up to an hour and a half on a single homework assignment just to see the fastest possible time I could achieve. This drive for self-improvement was a huge motivator for me.
Despite the high demands of the class, I had a lot of fun in it. Professor Johnson, while a bit eccentric, was a fantastic teacher who demonstrated not only great knowledge in his field of study, but a passion for it as well. That passion he held was quite instrumental for giving me the motivation to continue to strive for success in the class.
Overall, in spite of the difficulties I had initially faced, ICS 314 was one of my favorite classes I’ve taken this semester. It presented a challenge, but at the same time motivated you to continue on. In homework assignments, you were given the opportunity to just finish it once and turn it in, or try it multiple times in order to improve yourself. Instead of taking the easy way out (unless they were really long assignments), I attempted the assignment again and again in order to improve myself.