This week, I met my fellow classmates at the Worcester Art Museum (WAM) to meet our new “client.”  It is the start of our semester long project that will give us the hands on experience to properly develop and deploy a real production application that will be used outside of schooling.  I can safely say that this semester is going to be a very big deal, and it feels like it will be the most important class I’ve taken at WSU.  Software Development Process with Professor Karl Wurst – It is a very exciting time.   

We met with Katrina Stacy and Tim Furman, who were very friendly and welcoming to the group. They would be our main contacts at the WAM, and consequently our clients for this project.  We got a chance to talk about their needs, and we got a feel for what they were looking for.  I was hoping for more clear cut definitions of what they were looking for, but the entire project was very open to different ideas.  That was OK – Since many of us are not familiar with HTML5, it is probably best to have as much flexibility as possible with the project, depending on what we can or cannot develop in our time constraints.  Overall, it was a great start, and I could feel the excitement building. 

I’m actually more excited to try out our new collaboration tools than I am about the actual development process.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the idea of getting hands-on experience with HTML5 and mobile apps, but proper project management skills go a long way, and will be more valuable in the long run after each passing technology.  Even so, this actually all feels very familiar to me – starting with an idea, meeting with the client, brainstorming, planning, etc.  I’ve gone through this process many times before with my various development projects at work.  Management requests a need, a meeting is held to propose a solution, numerous meetings follow to approve changes, and a final release is done.  This time, however, I won’t be taking the process for granted.  We will truly utilize proper project management and collaboration tools online, and we will be working together with over 15 team members, a far larger development group than I am used to.  The overall process is the same, but in a very different environment, and at a much larger scale.  

This project will take a lot of time and effort.  We’ll be learning something new in many different respects: working with a client, working with a large development team, learning new technologies in HTML5, learning to work with mobile devices, and maybe even learning a little art history.  I just hope that I’ll be able to devote the amount of time to the project as I would like.  A new house, a new family, and a new position at work have really made the schedule tight.  I’ll just have to make time because the opportunity to help develop something like this could be over before I know it.  

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

Hello,

It’s been a fun week playing around with HTML/CSS this week, so far very little JavaScript.

Installing the tools in Eclipse was no problem, but making a simple project containing HTML5 and some javaScript work proved to be tricky, at least for me as a mac user. It turns out that in Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers (Juno 4.2), trying to run a project that is making use of the: “HTTP preview at LocalHost”, encounters the following problem: “Could not find JRE executable”.

This does not occur and the same project runs fine in Eclipse IDE for JavaScript Web Developers (Helios), after patching bug 293398 which can be downloaded from: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/.

Anyway, hopefully none of you encountered  this problem, and if you did, we’ll work around it this week. 

From the blog betoluna » CS WSU by betoluna1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello again,

This week was moderately exciting, I have made some major head way on the road to developing apps via Phone Gap as well as website design.  I’ve come to the conclusion that I must find the time to start my own webpage.  I have a few side projects for android that are all still in the making admittedly, but the trend seems to be that if you want to publish apps you need a website.  So, it has been a pleasure to learn HTML5 and CSS this past week, even if it was a lot of time spent hammering away at simple syntax.

As luck would have it, I found a great website via mozilla’s website design page called code academy; which had a great web fundamentals learning track.   It was not only exciting to learn the new material but code academy makes it rewarding as well with a series of badges you can earn across several learning tracks.  I have just begun to work through javascript which seems to be going very smoothly due to its vast similarities to java languages.  Its almost frustrating that code academy’s site forces you to work through so many  examples but I suppose practice makes progress and helps to memorize the syntax.

I am hoping to complete the javascript track mid week a begin working on the actual project as soon as tomorrow.  We are expecting to get the display information for our html based app soon,  so our class should have some page layouts ideas to discuss and decide on.  I imagine after doing code academy‘s web fundamentals track that the informative pages of this app will be the smaller challenge of the year.  With any luck we will push through simple informative pages quickly and begin designing more interactive features like games and possibly a reusable framework that can easily update new content without extensive programming knowledge.

Til next time.

Jason

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

In class this past week we used our time to visit the Worcester Art Museum and learn more about the project we will be undertaking. We first went over the class requirements and expectations with Professor Wurst, a necessary step in the first class of the semester. We then heard from Katrina Stacy and Tim Furman with more details about the general outline of the project that will be developed. They both seemed like they had a good understanding of what they want to see in a final product, but were also open to new ideas from us, which is a good thing. The rest of the time with them was sort of a mutual brainstorming session, with a couple new ideas being thrown out there; such as the possibility of the project being developed as a web application.

We then ventured upstairs to the conservation lab where work is done to conserve works of art, such as paintings and sculptures, that are hundreds of years old. The director of the lab spoke to us and first gave us a general idea of what they do and what their purpose is. She then showed us the three sculptures that will be the main focus of the project and gave us an interesting history of how they were made, found, and acquired.

Outside of class time, we were told to look over materials concerning HTML 5, Javascript, and CSS languages to prep ourselves for the coding aspect of the project. The background we have as upper level computer science students has given us a solid base to work up from with these languages that aren’t necessarily taught to us in our academic journey. I also found dzone.com an interesting source for news in the development world and also found that it had great reference resources with the refcardz.

I’m looking forward to class tomorrow to see what ideas my classmates have come up with over the rest of last week.

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

This week we had our first meeting.  It took place at the Worcester Art Museum.  This meeting we talked on how the semester would progress, met some of the staff at the Museum, and got a look at the art pieces that would be the center of our work project.

First on the class side of things learned that the main focus of the class was using what we have learned in the degree to complete a work project as close to real world situation as possible.  So less focus on learning new comp sci skills, more about the practical use of the skills we have.  I got the impression our class having an actual client with a real job wasn’t normal for the class so certainly lucked out I think.

For the project itself we met with Katrina Stacy and Tim Furman who will be our contacts at the Museum.  They explained the project, which is to go with their brand new exhibit and the first time they’ve really had any tech in an exhibit.  We will be designing a program to help show case special artwork.  While we have the specific focus for the three statues this exhibit will start with, if there is time we will be trying to make the program to be changeable as the Museum plans to change the featured art in this exhibit every six months or so.

Our next meetings will be focused heavily on how we want to accomplish this task.  It is a class so all ideas are pulled together from the students and also ideas and requests that the client has.  Almost certainly the class will break into smaller groups to work on different parts of the project simultaneously.  There will be a number of different needed jobs besides just coding, as I have no prior experience with the languages we are using I will likely look to help with the more easy but repetitive coding if needed and other non-coding tasks.  Although all the coding will be available to everyone so I plan to carefully watch everything that is done to help learn more about HTML5 and javascript.  The main reason to avoid doing advanced coding myself being that it would take me a lot longer to get quality code at least at first then one of my classmates who has more experience and I would not want to hold up any part of the project.

I am excited to be a part of this process, a work group, client, and project.  It will be excellent experience and also be something that will look good on a resume.  The professor will be working more as a project lead then a teacher.  Helping if we hit any road blocks, but the learning of how to do things will be primarily up to the students or programmers, just like it would be in a real work environment.

Next week I should have at least the start of the project outline.  Depending on how many ideas come up and how much discussion is needed it is hard to guess just how much we will get done, but as we are on a deadline I know everyone will try to push through as quickly as possible without loosing any quality.

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

First step is to open up Eclipse and go to the Help tab and click Install New Software. You will then see a Install Screen pop up. From here you will see at the top text: Work with: then a text box. At the end of the text box you can click the drop down menu and select this link:

Juno – http://download.eclipse.org/releases/juno

Then you will want to scroll down until you see this Name in the list:   Web, XML, Java EE and OSGi Enterprise Development. If you open the arrow to view the tool packages inside you can install all of them or there is a package called Eclipse Web Developer Tools. This has HTML, CSS, XHTML, etc. Inside this package when you select Next to install on the window, you can open the package and see JavaScript Tool is part of it as well. Then accept the terms and click Finish to Install the software.

To get GitHub installed with Eclipse, go back and open Install New Software in the help tab. From there select the same URL as posted above. You can then select Collaboration from the list below. Then you can see there is Eclipse EGit & Eclipse EGit Mylyn GitHub Feature. I selected both of those and installed them. Have not connected to our GitHub yet, but I am guessing those are the 2 plugins we will need.

From the blog rwilliams5262 » cs-wsu by rwilliams5262 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Since meeting with Tim and Katrina I got a better overall understanding of the project and what it will contain, as a class we were asked to familiarize ourselves with Javascript, CSS, and HTML 5. I chose to start looking into Javascript since then and so far I have a good overall understanding of its syntax and how to program inside the language.

I’m hoping to complete my research on it and my training involving it soon, and hope to be able to work on the Javascript side of this project, even though I will soon start my research into HTML 5 and CSS.

From the blog CS:401 » CS-WSU by dcarlin2013 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This was the first week we meet with the clients at the Worcester Art Museum for the iPad app. Things went well and we have a basic understanding of what they want within the app.

This week was filled with prep work for the project. Trying to better familiarize ourselves with the three languages we will be using (JavaScript, HTML 5 and CSS). Our project is in the very early stages of adding what needs to get done. However, I feel we will need to meet with Katrina and Tim one more time before taking on this project. While the idea is there, we will need to meet as a group and plan out our attack strategy. I feel it is best to wait and be on the same page with everyone then go off on my own and create something that gets scrapped.

The previous meeting got me ready and familiarized me with the end product they want. It also pushed me to prepare my coding knowledge. Now we are at the tipping point for the project to get started. This Monday will be the last discussion before everything is underway!

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