Final Entry

What did you like the least about the class?

The distribution of time for the projects. Collatz was 2 weeks better given to the website because it really wasn’t difficult or as interesting as the website, and the first 2 phases take more than double the time compared to the last 2 phases because that is where most of the tools have to be learned.

What did you like the most about the class?

While the time distribution was off, the fact that I was able to make a website with a backend is a very satisfying feeling and I’m happy I took the class for it.

What’s the most significant thing you learned?

How to read. Literally the only hard part was figuring out how to use the tools needed through just documentation and tutorials.

How many hours a week did you spend coding/debugging/testing for this class?

It was terrible at the start, with me spending around 30 hours per phase, but it was down to 10–15 hours for the last two phases. But that also had a lot to do with many of my group members were busy for the first two phases with other commitments and the first two phases also being the most work. Realistically, everyone should only have to spend around 15 hours per phase, tops.

How many hours a week did you spend reading/studying for this class?

30 minutes, just for the notes for quizzes and the papers for the annotations.

How many lines of code do you think you wrote?

2000–3000? Hard to tell because HTML is a lot of lines for very little.

What required tool did you not know and now find very useful?

SQLAlchemy, it’s very useful and intuitive to be able to manipulate SQL data through Python objects.

What’s the most useful Web dev tool that your group used that was not required?

React Select, it’s just a simple dropdown but it’s so much better than trying to mix in pure HTML lists with React.

How did you feel about your group having to self-teach many, many technologies?

That’s probably the worst part of the projects, you don’t know how to get started. Reading docs was half the time spent, because none of the code was complicated. There really should be more decent startpoints available for the students. Even if making straight up tutorials is too much work, at least let students know what the tools do. We were told to use “SQLAlchemy, Flask, and Flask-Restless for the backend” without even knowing what they do and what a backend even does, and the docs for all assume competency with SQL and Restful APIs, even though that was our first time learning those things.

How did you feel about the two-stage quizzes and tests?

I had no issues with them, although the second test was better than the first test because of the time given.

How did you feel about the cold calling, in the end?

It was fine, no real opinion about it.