My overall experience so far as a student learning how to become an software engineer has been an unique experience that I have never encountered from previous ICS courses provided in University of Hawaii at Manoa. ICS 314, the ICS class I was able to take this semester provided experiences closer to environment of actually working as a software engineer in a company. There were some times where I was not able to finish time limited assignment on time and doubted by overall ability as a software engineer, but after finishing a final project of creating my very own and My teammates’ fully functioning website was a very fulfilling experience I have not had for a while. From my journey in software development, user interface frameworks and codings standards are the two key concepts that I was able to develop myself as a better software engineer.
Those to people who are not familiar with the concept of User Interface Framework, it is basically a handy dandy tool, as it is described in my previous essay about UI framework, that makes the overall process of software development is easier. In my case of using User Interface Frameworks, Semantic UI definitely helped me a lot through the process of software development. Referring back to my previous essay, “UI Framework, A Handy-Dandy Tool, But Should Everyone Use It?”, I had different view on UI Framework, that UI Framework might possibly have a problem when it comes to optimization issues. However, I have realized that is not the main problem of using UI framework, but it has to do with the problem of being limited inside the framework, as there are development restriction that comes with using the framework. I still believe UI framework is highly recommended, especially if you are just getting into the field of software engineering.
Coding standards is also an important key concept that every software engineer should know. There is a famous saying that goes around in the software development environment, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. However, this is not the case for coding standards. The definition of coding standards is straight forwards, It is the universal standard that is required to be followed in the coding environment. In order to keep up with following the coding standard, ESLint definitely helped me a lot, to the point where it felt “wrong” to write codes without having ESLint disabled. As I would be working with multiple group of people in the future, I think it is safe to say that I have developed a good habit from this experience.
Being a software engineer cannot just end with being “done” with studying soft engineering. Although the software engineering techniques I was able to learn from ICS 314 was definitely an astonishing experience, but this is only a fraction of what I would potentially learn as a software engineer in the future. Being a software engineer is definitely not the easiest thing in the world. However, with the feeling of accomplishment that I always get every The time I finish a project is the reason that motivates me to continue learning what it takes to be a software engineer.