ICS 413 Soft Engineering final thoughts

ICS 413 seemed valuable because it may be the only class that teaches how to program in a professional setting. That's what I thought at first. What I think I'll value from this class most is the level of preparation I received in programming and project management. Over the course of this semester our class worked on continuous integration tools, open source software development, project health and even making a portfolio. These things are really crucial to preparing me and making me feel prepared for a professional career in programming.
I'll start off by saying that the lecture videos aspect of this class was helpful in constantly reminding me how things should be. As helpful as a lecturer may be, I don't think people are comfortable making professors repeat a certain topic over and over again.
Software Integration is a topic I was not familiar with at the beginning of this class, but now I can understand it and appreciate the role it plays in making a project that has good flow. It can help programmers make progress, and what's more important is that it makes things a lot faster and easier.
Open source software was something I had a idea about, but now I got the history of it as well. It's given me perspective about the technology world and society as it is today. This idea of sharing software and making contributions to a project is very comforting. If the world is truly connected, then anybody can contribute. I am very excited about the idea of many people sharing and contributing to the body of work in any project. I'd like to think it is perpetuating progress. History has shown that communication and the distance between people has been a big road block to the sharing of ideas and advancements in technology.
This semseter we also used something called software ICU. I wasn't not familiar with it at all and didn't know you could do something like that. We setup sensors in the programs we used like eclipse and ant. Then when we used those programs it showed how well we used them and how often. It is a reflective way of looking at our progress in a project and whether the habits are healthy. If progress is steady and updates are added incrementally then it's healthy. However, it can also show that you spent the whole night before the due date working on the project in order to get it done. I think it is very practical to use this to kind of keep yourself honest.

Lastly I was able to develop my online persona using this blog and through working on the projects. It's a big plus! I was really scared that once I graduated I wouldn't have anything to show propective employers. I'm always getting emails from my counselor with employers asking for people in the field that have a year or two of
programming experience. How can I have experience if nobody hires me?

Overall, this class has been a positive influence on me because of how many I learned. Of course I had to work my butt off to get a good grade. I think it's made me a better programmer.