ICS 314 was one of my favorite classes this semester and I really learned a lot even though at times this class put me under an immense amount of pressure, aka the WODS. When professor sent out an email asking us how we felt about the course before starting, I remember writing something along the lines of how this was my first time programming in about two years and that I was nervous as to if I’d even do good in this class. My sense of anxiousness went away as I was learning so much during this course that the two year gap in programming didn’t even matter.
Throughout this course we learned about different IDEs and coding standards which were very useful as we took on different tasks and assignments. The main IDE that we used in this course was IntelliJ IDEA. Before this, we were using and online IDE known as JSFiddle. The differences were night and day. With IntelliJ, the IDE allowed us to autofill and even helped correct our coding mistakes with refactor which corrected the file as a whole rather than going line by line fixing errors one by one. This helped us write code a lot more efficiently which helped us save time. Coding standards also helped us write more efficient code because it made it easier for all of us to collaborate with each other knowing that we’re all following the correct set of rules in our code. Coding standards help code be more readable as it gets passed down from person to person as it is held to some standard which programmers are familiar with.
Design patterns are reusable solutions to common problems that occur in software design. They are a way of capturing proven design experience and making it available to other developers. Design patterns can help you write more maintainable, flexible, and reusable code by providing a common vocabulary and a set of best practices for solving common design problems.Design patterns are not specific to any programming language and can be applied in a variety of contexts. They can be a helpful tool for developers to use as they design and build software systems.
Again, ICS 314 taught me a lot of valuable skills that I will use in the future. The two topics I covered above are only the surface of what was covered in class but were the ones that stuck out to me the most. All the concepts that were taught in this class will carry over to my future career.