To be completely honest, I was not planning on taking another software engineering course. I already had to take 314 as part of my standard ICS curriculum at UH so I was somewhat hesitant to take the next available course. However, when I heard that we would be working with an actual client that needed actual solutions, I was intrigued. More experience working with customers and as a team is what I thought I needed out of my college journey, in order to be ready for a full-time job in the future.
My team and I, the RainbowGeeks, were tasked with launching a website application for VolunteerAlly, a volunteering hub for people and businesses in Oahu, HI. It was interesting to work with a bigger team than my last software engineering project. Similar to before, we used Discord as the main method for communication and staying in touch. We also used GitHub project boards to stay updated on tasks and stuff to get done before our many milestones for the class.
Throughout the class, I was able to really fine-tune my software engineering skills that I began developing when I took 314 about a year ago. For example, my skills involving design patterns have improved. Since I was able to see similarities between this project and my last, I was able to implement similar solutions into this project in order to save time and effort. Although we did not have WODs to test this skill out in a timely fashion, I have become more confident in my abilities regarding my efficiency in programming. Another example would be my use of coding standards. Since we worked on this project in a larger group, we had to make sure that our code was organized and legible so that all our teammates could read and understand what was going on.
Although I did not plan on taking it, I am pretty satisfied with how this class went. I particularly enjoyed working with a real world client in order to get good experience in the field. Even if I do not plan on being a software engineer in the future, I am glad that I took this class and got good experience in programming as well as working with customers.