First of all, i would say this course was my first experience of working in a real working environment; and it helped me to catch a proper image of how everyone work together to get a big project done. It is true that in programming, we may not know what we are building until all the codes are integrated and form a product. A big project would be broken down into several different parts and each part would be handled by a group of programmers. Then, every group has its own task to do. Some parts of the project do not need to know how the other parts are going. Team-working, brainstorming, setting up tasks for each group are all the important initial steps of the process. That would help to work efficiently.

A project leader or advisor is also very important to help get the project’s process on the right track and make it move as quick as possible. 

Beside those, real working environment involves clients. We need to stay informed and updated with them. Although clients do not always know what they talk about programming, we have to focus on what they would like the product to function so that we can both come to a happy ending of a contract.

Communication is the very important thing to get the project done efficiently. Beside emaillist, Git and GitHub were new to me and they were great tools. They are also the great tools for out teams to manage, share, and contribute on our project. I would learn more about them.

Since our big project was broken into smaller parts and each group had a different part to work on, besides my team’s work, i did not know about other teams’ works – how they had their tasks finished. there were many things that i would like to work on but i did not such as data base, server, user interface, and testing the codes. However, the priority goal of the course was to learn how to work together in a real working environment, to have the ability to process, analyze corporate, and get the job done; and i felt like i already had the achievements for those from this course.

For this course, i wish i could know more about git and the language used for the project before. 

For the weekly post, we were asked to post weekly, but with the lack of programming languages, being stuck on how to get problem solved, some weeks i was on the same thing. Rather than just post a sentence to say about that, i waited until i got something done to post. That caused the lack of my posts.

From the blog daunguyen10's Blog » CS-WSU by daunguyen10 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The final decision was to go with the previous screensaver for the better compatible with the iPad. Also, Tim wanted us to modify the introPage format a little bit by putting the navigation button back to the middle of the bottom edge. And that will be it, the final version of screen saver.

From the blog daunguyen10's Blog » CS-WSU by daunguyen10 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This post won’t make much sense if you have not read my last.

By snooping around other peoples apps some more, I came across the puzzle groups JavaScript folder. In there I found what was allowing the puzzle pieces to be moved around. It is done by an extension to the jquery suite and adds support for drag on the iPad through touchPunch. TouchPunch has been added to the slideshow as well as jquery, which I made the decision to move away from earlier… Well now I’m back.

In theory I should just be able to add the “draggable” function to the image element. So far no luck. It maybe conflicts with the other drag function. I hadn’t thought of this until now. The problem is, when to call/allow the draggable function to be called. Each image is contained in a separate div, so when is the appropriate time? Something I’ll have to think about.

The other solution would still be what I talked about before. Updating the drag function as it stands now in MooTools-more and add touchMove events.

And… now that I brought back jquery support, maybe I should change the current swipe ‘tech’ in the app to jquery instead of the current iteration.

A lot to think about.

This is probably the last weekend I’ll be able to work on it. I hope I have big breakthrough. Again, the latest version I’m working on is on the test server.

From the blog Sean » cs-wsu by shorton1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This post won’t make much sense if you have not read my last.

By snooping around other peoples apps some more, I came across the puzzle groups JavaScript folder. In there I found what was allowing the puzzle pieces to be moved around. It is done by an extension to the jquery suite and adds support for drag on the iPad through touchPunch. TouchPunch has been added to the slideshow as well as jquery, which I made the decision to move away from earlier… Well now I’m back.

In theory I should just be able to add the “draggable” function to the image element. So far no luck. It maybe conflicts with the other drag function. I hadn’t thought of this until now. The problem is, when to call/allow the draggable function to be called. Each image is contained in a separate div, so when is the appropriate time? Something I’ll have to think about.

The other solution would still be what I talked about before. Updating the drag function as it stands now in MooTools-more and add touchMove events.

And… now that I brought back jquery support, maybe I should change the current swipe ‘tech’ in the app to jquery instead of the current iteration.

A lot to think about.

This is probably the last weekend I’ll be able to work on it. I hope I have big breakthrough. Again, the latest version I’m working on is on the test server.

From the blog Sean » cs-wsu by shorton1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

After counting the blog posts, I have only 12, and the course requires 14, so I will write 2 more random, CS-related, but not course-related, ranting posts.

So as titled, I will now describe what my summer plan for this summer is like!

For this summer, I got accepted for the REU program at Depauw University located in the beautiful town of Greencastle, Indiana. The title of the project I applied for is “Problem Solving using Parallel Programming.” here is the link & description http://my.depauw.edu/univ/reu/projects.html

This is a 10-week program. It starts next Wednesday the 29th, and I have to be there on the 28th. They provide up to $600 for traveling expenses. At first I was going to take a plane there, but then I google the town and found out it’s relatively(?) countryside, and no public transportation. Since I will be there for basically 2 1/2 months, I think I’ll need my car so I decided that I will drive there. Google Map says it would take around 15 hours, minus the traffic, to get there. So I will begin my 1-man solitary road trip this coming Sunday. Please wish me luck!

So far, we have not decided on what kind of problem we will try to solve for the summer. But I know that we will be programming in Erlang language. Erlang is a functional programming language that is mostly used for Parallism…or so Google says. Now I have started reading the book on Erlang, just to get a bit of a head start so I won’t be super lost next week, and it is quite different from (what the book calls) “imperative” language like C++, Java, etc. For example, it is highly similar to real mathematical equation in terms of the use of variables, like lets say, x = 5; you cannot say x = 5+1 now, because 5 != 6.

Anyways, then I was researching whether learning this language would make my resume look better and help me get a job after graduation, and the answer is…”depends.”

So Erlang is mostly used for solving problem through parallelism to speed up the computation time exponentially. But most of the time, this only happens in research institutions, not really business corporations. So if I want a research job, or grad school, knowing functional language will help upping my candidacy a bit. Although I guess more and more companies are starting to utilize parallel programming and more functional programming jobs are becoming more available, and the pay is quite good (w/ experience of course). So if it turns out I am able to pick up the language and I like it, I might as well stick with it, since some article said that non-mainstream language programmers hardly ever get laid off….so we’ll see!!

*EDIT: after some more googling around, I found that there are quite a few of jobs available for Erlang with OTP and databases…so yeaa I will see how far I can understand the language after the summer!

From the blog ssuksawat » cs-wsu by ssuksawat and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

After counting the blog posts, I have only 12, and the course requires 14, so I will write 2 more random, CS-related, but not course-related, ranting posts.

So as titled, I will now describe what my summer plan for this summer is like!

For this summer, I got accepted for the REU program at Depauw University located in the beautiful town of Greencastle, Indiana. The title of the project I applied for is “Problem Solving using Parallel Programming.” here is the link & description http://my.depauw.edu/univ/reu/projects.html

This is a 10-week program. It starts next Wednesday the 29th, and I have to be there on the 28th. They provide up to $600 for traveling expenses. At first I was going to take a plane there, but then I google the town and found out it’s relatively(?) countryside, and no public transportation. Since I will be there for basically 2 1/2 months, I think I’ll need my car so I decided that I will drive there. Google Map says it would take around 15 hours, minus the traffic, to get there. So I will begin my 1-man solitary road trip this coming Sunday. Please wish me luck!

So far, we have not decided on what kind of problem we will try to solve for the summer. But I know that we will be programming in Erlang language. Erlang is a functional programming language that is mostly used for Parallism…or so Google says. Now I have started reading the book on Erlang, just to get a bit of a head start so I won’t be super lost next week, and it is quite different from (what the book calls) “imperative” language like C++, Java, etc. For example, it is highly similar to real mathematical equation in terms of the use of variables, like lets say, x = 5; you cannot say x = 5+1 now, because 5 != 6.

Anyways, then I was researching whether learning this language would make my resume look better and help me get a job after graduation, and the answer is…”depends.”

So Erlang is mostly used for solving problem through parallelism to speed up the computation time exponentially. But most of the time, this only happens in research institutions, not really business corporations. So if I want a research job, or grad school, knowing functional language will help upping my candidacy a bit. Although I guess more and more companies are starting to utilize parallel programming and more functional programming jobs are becoming more available, and the pay is quite good (w/ experience of course). So if it turns out I am able to pick up the language and I like it, I might as well stick with it, since some article said that non-mainstream language programmers hardly ever get laid off….so we’ll see!!

*EDIT: after some more googling around, I found that there are quite a few of jobs available for Erlang with OTP and databases…so yeaa I will see how far I can understand the language after the summer!

From the blog ssuksawat » cs-wsu by ssuksawat and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I just had to make a couple of changes to the Introduction Page as Tim requested. All I had to do was, moving the navigation (left+right) buttons to the center of the page, and also have it say “next” and “previous.” That is all!

This course has been a very valuable for learning what it is like to work in a real development environment, as well as working in a large group. Working in team is not new to me; at my internship we work in a small team of 3. But working with a team THIS large is quite hectic, and requires much more planning, strategizing, and coordination. Overall, we got the work done, and it is a very rewarding feeling to see our “idea” turning into a real product.

Also, since this is most likely the last change i had to make, and is conclusion of this class. I will probably most likely never blog again. Thank you! 🙂

From the blog ssuksawat » cs-wsu by ssuksawat and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.