Ever since the pandemic, the modern workplace has gone through many shifts. The realization that workers can still be effective members of the company from their home has changed a lot of people’s perspective on the corporate work environment. Many workers have pushed for remote work to become a staple of the modern job market. It’s easy to see the appeal of remote work: No commute, stuffy office, or even stuffier dress code sounds very appealing to me. I personally enjoy the ease of access to one’s job right in their own home. All of that said, the infrastructure for remote work has been in the works for longer than we realized that there was a need for it. In the modern era, cloud computing has become a necessity for almost any job regardless of whether it is remote or not. Services such as AWS, Azure, and Git hub/lab  has supplemented developers with the tools to contribute to their workplace from anywhere on the globe. Now teams can be comprised of just about any developer within the company, and can pull from just about any talent pool. This comes with its own set of  unique challenges. Balancing time zones, ensuring communication between team members, and increased risk to cybersecurity and more come with the territory of al your developers working from their house. Cloud computing answers some of these problems by providing more security and reliability to development teams. Applications such as Zoom also provide new avenues of communication between team members, and can even facilitate daily scrum meetings if needed. While the pandemic is over and most companies have tried to push their employees to go back to the office, remote work has become a fixture in the modern work landscape. I believe companies should incorporate some of these new technologies to expand their reach.

https://socpub.com/articles/how-can-cloud-computing-enable-remote-teams-work-more-productively-17895

From the blog CS@Worcester Alejandro Professional Blog by amontesdeoca and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

     A subject that has always been very near and dear to my heart are video games. Throughout my life I have always deeply enamored with games and the process of their creation, from the intricacies of 3d modeling to the various game engines in  use. Despite that, I wouldn’t  say I am an expert in modern game development by any means. As my classes have progressed however, I’ve begun to understand more about the inner workings of software development and how how teams are managed. This lead me to look into how game developers use these tools to manage projects and keep everything orderly. After some research, I found that prominent game engines like Unreal Engine have their source code up on Github. Not only that but Godot, a free open source engine, uses the MIT license and is entirely up on Github. Of course, even if an engine doesn’t have their code on Github or Gitlab that doesn’t mean you can’t just host your code in an online repository. Thanks to what I’ve learned this semester I now know how to create game projects and host them, as well as keep a neat record of commits.

 In terms of project frameworks, agile methodologies has seen widespread use within the video game industry. Scrum is the most prominent of these methodologies,  and has been adopted by various companies. Due to the nature of video game development, there is a greater need for cross-discipline teams comprised of developers versed in various skills. Game development can be effectively chopped up into tasks that fit nicely into each increment. I hope to one day make use of scrum and help create a game of my own.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/ue-on-github

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/agile-game-development-with-scrum-teams

https://starloopstudios.com/best-agile-practices-in-game-development/

From the blog CS@Worcester Alejandro Professional Blog by amontesdeoca and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

     In recent time I have started a job as a computer teacher for a private school, and as such I’ve had to become familiar with educational software. As an educator, I believe it is important for there to be a plethora of accessible software to teach children digital literacy. While there are certainly many free IDEs out there for any aspiring programmer to use, I’m more concerned with children still in elementary, middle, and high school. Open source software allows young students a safe environment to learn and create, without incurring a hefty price tag for their school. This is especially true for those learning how to code since it isn’t exactly a subject that comes naturally to everyone. The most prominent educational coding software I have found is MIT’s own Scratch. Licensed under the “Creative Commons Share Alike” license, Scratch provides a block-based coding environment that is easily understood and accessible to children. There’s even Scratch jr. for younger audiences, available on tablets. MIT also released App Inventor, a free open source software for creating mobile applications, showcasing the ability of open source software to easily adapt to changes in social needs. But educational software doesn’t just encompass programming and mobile apps, it also extends to tools needed for academic success. Software such as ONLYOFFICE, which provides a free alternative to Microsoft Office, is greatly appreciated by students who can’t afford the more popular version. Education is a sector in need of accessible tools so that we can better teach the next generation, and lay the groundwork for future developers.

https://scratch.mit.edu/faq

https://elearningindustry.com/open-source-tools-to-boost-digital-learning

From the blog CS@Worcester Alejandro Professional Blog by amontesdeoca and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.