From Robots to Energy Grids: Software Engineering Reflection

Prof. Johnson's ICS Software Engineering class was a unique experience this semester. It was the first class that actually made me feel like a Computer Scientist. Working towards a real-world problem, collaborating with others, and learning new tools all made it surreal and thrilling. Granted this course takes a lot out of you, at times I felt like the assignments didn't bear enough time and that I had to focus most of my energies into this course. This course felt like a job and my pay was my final grade.

What I found most valuable were the new software engineering tools such as Ant, Subversion, and Quality Assurance tools, JUnit, Checklist, PMD, and FindBugs. For the assignments that we did, from Robocode, to Wattdepot, to Wicket, it was hard to find a balance between Quality and Functionality. Prof. Johnson constantly encouraged us to create test cases as we developed our projects, but I found it difficult to come up with what aspects to test. Testing takes a considerable amount of time with every run of Ant. JUnit would take an excess amount of time to complete and it seemed like it hindered the overall time spent waiting for the project to pass verify.

The group aspect gave me another take at what it is to collaborate with others, especially with those in my field. It seemed that the group went only as far as the strongest person. Sure everyone has their forte, but doing everything shouldn't be one of them. It was hard to find an even split of work for everyone to do. There was always some aspect that bled into another, and it was hard not to just work on a single method or class without waiting for someone to commit their changes.

We were introduced to an array of technologies and experienced many different aspects of being a software engineer. We were fortunate enough to have coded in Java throughout the semester, a language that has been drilled into my brain every since my beginning semesters as an ICS student. Though, the one thing that I would like to learn more about is the framework for planning. Splitting the work load is always a big issue. How do you come across as knowledgeable rather than bossy? Or try and get someone to carry their own weight in a tactful way that doesn't sound too threatening. Indeed, it might have turned out differently if we had everyone in our group share what are strengths and weaknesses were. However, group work isn't something that is deeply encourage in the lower levels of ICS, so it takes some getting used to the concept of collaboration and the sharing of ideas.

Learning a new system and how to use it such as WattDepotClient, and learning a new language, via Wicket, are the types of things expected of every Computer Scientist in order to keep up in this field.