E4: Progress in Programming Report
09 Nov 2023
Progress in Programming Report
My programming skills have greatly improved in the following ways: My programming skills have immensely improved over the course of this semester. When I first started ITM 352, I had no prior experience with any coding language. I dedicated a lot of time to this class and fully committed to reading all of the materials, completing all the POKE’s and Labs, and pursuing outside tutoring practice. I started with not understanding HTML, to now writing HTML and JavaScript files that conduct server and client side processing simultaneously. I am grateful to not only understand the little bits of code (example: what a “GET” or “POST” does), but I understand the big picture of what the code will do when putting all of the variables, functions, if/else statements, elements, attributes, etc. together. There are good practices to consider when coding such as informational commenting and using descriptive variable names.
I need to work on the following to improve my programming skills: One aspect I like most about this class and my major is that you will never stop learning. I need to learn much more about how to debug the code (console.log()) and check to make sure it is running properly. When I am stuck on a problem, I need to learn how to better handle looking and testing for what the problem is. I tend to stick to what I believe is wrong instead of checking for things such as proper symbols, names, and console.logs.
I have learned a lot from doing POKEs and I can do them without copying the screencast: I can confidently say that working on the POKE’s prepares you for programming that is needed specifically for assignment #1. Overtime, I learned a lot from the screencasts and now understand how to problem solve as they do in the screencast more efficiently.
The labs have helped me learn and I am able to complete them with confidence: The labs have developed another level of confidence, and that is explaining what the code does. The lab assignment questions were tailored to analytical thinking about not copying or running certain code, but asking a lot of questions that encouraged more learning to answer it more effectively.
I learned a lot from my experience doing Assignment 1 and feel ready to work on Assignment 2: I have never taken a class with a learning curve so high. The experience was very challenging, but I enjoyed learning all of it. There were frustrating times, but I learned how to do a lot of things I did not know. I now know the difference between POST and GET better, server side and client side processing, I understand dynamic web pages now, etc. What helped me so much was meeting with Professor Sal, Students, and using Discord to ask so many questions and get amazing help from people. It was very much a group effort and I enjoyed learning. Assignment #2 I am very nervous about it, but I feel that it is very interesting to learn things such as encrypting passwords etc that can be utalized in my future career.
I think the class can be improved to help my learning in the following ways: This class can be approved by more time on final assignments and managing expectations for assignments. For a semester course, I believe Assignment #1 and Assignment #2 is completely fair for students because we have been introduced to all of these concepts with very challenging parts that encourage growth. Parts of Assignment #3 I would like it to be focused more on concepts we have learned instead of learning a concept completely new as we do the assignment. Especially, since the assignments are worth so much of our grade and we have little time to complete it.
What helps me the most in class are: POKE’s, Labs, screencasts, collaborations, and readings help most in the class. Most important is doing the readings before class! You do not have to be an expert, but you can at least be familiar with these parts of the concepts that will be discussed in class. Think of the readings as preliminary studying for the class. When the Professor goes through the class content, you will be able to understand and follow along much more. Also, collaborating with the professor or other people in class who know what they are doing was very beneficial to ask exact questions for the code that has been written.