Module 3 - CST 336

This week we continued our foray into PHP and discussed some of the ways of handling input from end users. It was interesting to see how $_GET and $_POST worked and were used to handle the input differently. We also went over arrays in PHP and utilized them and some built-in functions to make a page which would manipulate some input on a previous page. It was fairly open to what exactly we could do so I did a few operations with changing a string to an array and manipulating it as well as playing around with a set of numbers provided by the user. Overall it was an interesting week that covered some useful topics, and I look forward to the next assignments.

Module 2 - CST 336

This week was very interesting. We did not utilize much from the previous week’s lesson other than hosting our new assignment pages and adding a few lines of css styling to give our projects some flavor. It was quite interesting to learn about PHP, it seems to be a relatively straightforward language and seems easier to learn. I used it to create two pages, assignment 2 and lab 2 for my course portfolio which I linked to from my homepage. For my assignment, which we were given some creative freedom on, I created a grid that would randomly print out numbers check if they were prime or composite and collect the number of primes and composites, it was similar to the lab but I needed another for loop to check whether the number was prime or not and I also threw in something special for a lucky number.

Module 1 - CST 336

This week I got to undertake my first serious foray into HTML and CSS. My prior experience with HTML and CSS was quite minimal in its scope and a few years in the past so I do not remember much from it. I found it quite interesting to learn about the style rules and how versatile these languages can be. I had little to no prior skills in building and hosting webpages before this and it was quite fun to create my first three webpages. It was a little tricky at first figuring out how to link to the other files from my homepage, but I believe that I have it set up properly now. I'm excited about the coming weeks as I'll be able to learn more about internet programming and gain new skills which will be useful to me for years to come.

Module 8 - CST 338

They say hindsight is 20/20, what advice would you give to the next cohort regarding this course?
Be prepared to communicate constantly with your teammates and let them know about your schedule, what you will work on, and whether you need any help or not.

How much do you envision using the skills you gained in this course in your career?
I will definitely use the skills I learned in this course. I was able to study a new language, learn more on multithreading and building GUI interfaces, and perhap most fun was utilizing Android Studio to create my own app.

Good job this session!  You are well on your way to finishing your degree!
Update your learning journal from what you experienced this week with class. 
This week we were able to work on our final project for the course. We had quite a bit of freedom in this project and I decided to expand on the subjects we covered in the last week with Android Studio. For the final I utilized some of the concepts I researched and designed and implemented a game using Android Studio.

Module 7 - CST 338

Have you ever created an app before, either for Android or iPhone?  How did it go?
No, I had not previously attempted to create an app for either Android or iPhone.

Do you have any ideas for apps that you could create for recreation?  What about business?
I haven’t thought very much about any apps I would create, but I would like to expand my skill set by creating more apps. Perhaps starting out with something simpler like a dice throwing game would be an interesting project.

Update your learning journal from what you experienced this week with class. 
This week we went through a series of tutorials on Youtube on how to use Android Studio to create our own apps. It was a very fun and interesting series, and I am really glad to have gotten to get a taste of working with Android. I’m thinking that I may utilize the topics we covered this week for my final project and create and Android app for my submission.

Module 6 - CST 338

What experience do you have with UML diagrams?
My experience with UML diagrams has been primarily in coursework where we have crafted UML’s for our projects.

Are they used at your workplace?
No, I do not use UML diagrams at my workplace.

Have you done multithreading in any language before?
Yes, I have done some multithreading in C++ before when working with a GUI interface game.

Did you find Patterns to be helpful? 
Yes, simply the idea of creating more generic chunks of code that can be reused multiple times in different instances is appealing, and the possible applications for Patterns is quite expansive.

Update your learning journal from what you experienced this week with class. 
This week we had an interesting job working on our GUI card interface from the previous weeks. We learned about and applied multithreading in order to add a timer to the GUI card game and also update the game itself to a different game which was quite fun. Overall the project was interesting and engaging and it is somewhat sad that, I believe, this will be the last group project we have in this course, as my teammates are all quite amazing and fun to work with.

Module 5 - CST 338

GUI is learned late in the game with Java.  Do you think this is helpful or harmful and why?
I think it is helpful to wait a little while to learn GUI after going over the fundamentals in a language because from personal experience I find it much easier to understand and comprehend the language. One can easily get caught up more in the appearance of the GUI rather than the programming itself, and I personally found it much more interesting to work with the code than focus on looks.

Why do think that coding the Swing elements in Java would be more difficult compared to some other languages?
The syntax for the Swing elements maybe a little harder to grasp initially then other programming languages such as python, but the versatility of being able to build layer upon layer of the interface rather easily makes the Swing system very fun to work with.

Update your learning journal from what you experienced this week with class. 
This week we learned about GUI interfaces and how to write them in Java. One really interesting part of the week was working with the Swing elements to create the card table for this weeks assignment. I also created a video presentation this week on my thoughts for assignment 5. We created a GUI High Card game for the assignment this week and I really enjoyed working on this project.