C482 Software I

This is one course in which all the work I did over spring break really paid off. I had completed SoloLearn's Java course and watched Bucky's Java and JavaFX tutorials. I also went over Jaret Wright's SceneBuilder tutorials which really made up the bulk of the work. By the time I started this course, I was able to jump in after watching the cohorts (I built the GUI first because that was fun).

I think I thought the programming was the easy part until I hit the last 20% of the requirements. I started to put in a lot more hours than I normally do and managed to finish in under two weeks (closer to five weeks if you count the work I did over term break).

The mentors give us a lot of code samples in the cohorts that made up a lot of the pieces we need for the project. I spent a good deal of time pulling those apart and putting them back together a few times to make them work for this project. I had to redo the entire program a few times before I build a solid enough skeleton to just keep building. But I think that's not unusual for someone who is still really new to programming.

I think for the most part, I still consider myself a quilt programmer. I can take various pieces of code, edit it to work for my situation, then stitch it all in the right place. It's a lot more involved than what I did in MSDA for sure (you can't do this kind of quilting without a solid understanding of what the code does and how to make it work for your situation). However, I'm not feeling like 'a programmer' just yet. I don't think I could do a lot of it from scratch or figure something out without seeing how someone did something similar to what I was aiming for.

I'll be working on this after my term ends. I want to feel like a competent programmer before applying to Georgia Tech and since their deadline moved from September to July, I'm now aiming for July 2020.