LET’S GO
About Me
My name is Brett Ratner, I am an Interactive Multimedia major with a Computer Science minor. My various skills are HTML, Javascript, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Java and many more in which a multiple of them were used in creating my senior thesis project. I am also a strong minded charismatic leader that I bring to every group of team I am apart of. After graduation my plans are to enter a career as a software engineer, or a full stack web developer.
About The Application
Let’s Go is application that will allow people to update and view how crowded restaurants, movie theaters, and any other place that people commonly go to before they leave their house. In hope that if a place is very crowded you will either pick a different time to go there, or go somewhere else all together that would fit in with what you wanted to do. This app will hopefully allow its users to use their time a little more wisely than to waste it waiting in lines everyday. This app will be updated and monitored by the people who are using it, to make sure the data being presented is as accurate as possible. Future iterations of the project will include machine learning to allow the user to plain out their day or even week by dragging and dropping in locations.
Description of Showcase
The Interactive Multimedia showcase is an event where the seniors work on a project for two full semesters to create something that is inspirational, and innovative to society. The night of the showcase every senior sets up their project and then for the rest of the night everyone stands by and explains their projects to potential employers, professors, family, and more.
Tools
First Iteration of project: Android Studio(java) and Xcode(swift) to develop my project as native mobile applications for android and IOS, used AWS to host my database. During implementation I into some difficulties so I then I needed to switch how I was approaching making the mobile app.
Second Iteration of project: Ionic Framework to develop a cross platform mobile application for both Android and IOS and was still using AWS for hosting my database. However there were some complications where the framework stopped working and my project was corrupted.
Third Iteration of project: Switched to making a responsive website for mobile devices. The tools I used were HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and I switched over to using mySQL as my database instead of AWS.
Significant Challenges
There were many challenges that I faced throughout the year that set me back and changed the outcome of my final project. My first challenge was using AWS for the first time and I was unable to get my android and iphone app to connect to the database. After That I needed I decided to switch to using Ionic and try to connect to AWS with that instead of continue to be stuck making it my app natively. While creating my app in ionic I was able to get very far in completing it. However one day when I tried to open up my code in ionic is was all corrupted and then when I tried and run my code it was unable to build out the project. Then After spending days trying to recover my work I was time to cut my losses and start over again. I then switch over to creating a website that would designed specifically for mobile web. I then decided to eliminate any more hiccups with my thesis so when I was creating the website I backed up every night my code to github and google drive to make sure that my work was backed up. After I was doing that I did not run into any major problems with developing my project. Over all make sure to backup your work and also don’t waste too much time on any one task if you are stuck on something for too long either put it aside and come back to it or reach out and to a friend of professor and get some help.
Advice to future students
There is a lot of advice I would give to future TCNJ students. I would first like to talk about what I would do If I were to do thesis over again. I would set up a GitHub repository again but if they are not doing a project that involves programming then they should use something like google drive to put backups of their project on. This is really important because when working on the same project for an entire year it’s not a matter of if something will go wrong, it’s a matter of when something will go wrong. I could have saved myself a lot of stress and time if I had been backing up my work early and often to a location that is not on my laptop. I would also suggest for thesis it may be better to get into a group with one or two other people. However, they need to make sure they form a group with people who have good work habits and want to see the project succeed. Every group member needs to make ample time to dedicate to working on the project. If someone does choose to work by themselves, like I did, they should know that that doesn’t mean that they are completely alone when working on this project. Everyone in thesis, but especially those working alone, cannot be afraid to ask for help from professors or even friends. It may surprise you how willing your friends are to lend a hand and help you out. As far as asking professors, well they want to see everyone succeed, sometimes even more than you do at times and they are a great tool to get help and talk about ideas with. As one person you won’t be able to know everything and although it is always good to try it, and figure it out first, it is also good to know when you need to take a step back and seek help. Now for some advice for starting that new chapter in your life called college, there are several things you should keep in mind. When coming to TCNJ, during that first week during welcome week go out and don’t stop meeting new people, because during that week all the other freshman are in that same boat of wanting to meet new people and it is the best time to make some new friends. Along with that, throughout the four years that you will be at this college, you will make a lot of great memories however there will be time when everything just gets really stressful and you feel like nothing is going your way. Even though you may feel like that in the moment as long as you stay calm and keep taking steps forward everything will work itself out and then that stressful experience will have made you a better person for handling and overcoming it. I truly believe that everything does happen for a reason, if you don’t see it at first you may just need to look a bit harder to find that reason.The biggest piece of advice I can give to anyone is that no matter what happens in life always know that you are never alone and there is always someone there who is cheering you on in your corner. If you think you can’t think anyone who is always there for you from your family, friends, professors, or someone from some sort of school club or organization who you can talk to, well you could always reach out to me. I was fortunate enough to have so many loving and supporting people to help me out through college so I would be more than happy to give back and help out.
