Hello everyone, this is Patrick.

For a long time I thought I would enjoy a career in the field of computer science, throughout my career I have worked with hardware, electronics and different software. In 2021, I decided to take my chance at this field and I applied to OSU. I have enjoyed all the previous courses and have learned a lot. I am ready to take the last class and work with you.

Blog post #1: Building a Good Team

Having a good team is the key, so how do we build that?

One of most important things about working with a team that I learned during previous classes, is to build a team that has some key similarities such as similar times for working or project goals while also having important differences.  Often these differences really allow a team to become top quality if the members can learn to play off of one another’s strengths.  My coding experience is mostly limited to what we have learned at OSU, but I am very dedicated and hard working, so having a team member with more outside experience and ideas but maybe less time to work has been a good team member for me. Having other team members with different creative thinking than my own is also important to build depth within the projects we create.

A good, strong team where every member works for the same goal by following a set schedule and ground rules is also crucial in delivering a good product.  It is also very important that the communication within team members creates a healthy, collaborative environment where all ideas and concerns can be stared, all while staying respectful to one another.  

A good team has a clear vision of what the team wants to achieve, and every member of the team must acknowledge it, understanding their role in achieving this vision. With clear rules, project objectives, and integrated skillsets, great success can be achieved.

Blog post #2: More fun than expected

I have to admit, I like coding more than I expected. For a long time I was a seismic technician. I worked on preparing, testing and maintaining seismic equipment, and if needed to make sure the seismic observer knew how to operate it. I had a lot of freedom in the way I could work, the only thing that mattered was to make sure that the equipment was ready on time and was fully tested. I really like to solve problems and coding seems to me to be the same way. There are many things that have to be solved before the product is ready and there are many ways to get there.

The project my team and I are working is Job Tracking. Personally, it was not my first choice, but I am so glad that as a group we decided on this project. This project is a collection of topics I learned during all my previous classes at this OSU post-baccalaureate program. The project allows me to work on a web application that includes full-stack and database to store data entered by users of the app. The technologies we are using are React.js, Node.js, Express.js, and Google Cloud database. This project allows me to get a better understanding of all these technologies and get more experience with them. Especially working on the frontend and with React gives me a lot of experience, adding new features such as the sort option to tables gives me opportunities to learn more how React works. Another thing is my team. Thanks to the members of my team I am exposed to new ways of writing the project. Each member brings something new to the table, giving new ideas of how to create the project, and new resources such as different support websites that were unknown to me before. This class and the project is a good culmination of my journey with OSU.

I hope you all have good time writing your projects and have opportunities to learn new things.

January 24, 2023

Blog post #3: Writing a project from the scratch to the working web app

Writing a project on its own, without guidance or specs from OSU instructors, is a completely different experience than when you are in other OSU classes. In other OSU classes we were guided, and most of the time given very precise specifications for our projects. For me personally, it was much easier to be given precise specifications to follow, although I know some students found they had a hard time to follow all the precise specifications. I personally preferred the detailed guidance. With the current projects in this Capstone course we received some general specifications for the project but no specific details or requirements on how to implement it. I need to admit, to write a skeleton code that the team uses to build a fully working app was less time consuming than working on the small tasks such as a single page of the project. Working on all small details that the page needs to have takes hours of research, then implementing and testing if it works. Another task I am currently working on is deploying the project on Google Cloud. I thought it would be a simple task to move it from the current location where it is deployed locally on my computer. Deploying the project on Google Cloud, which consists of frontend and backend, is completely different than deploying the full stack application on OSU servers where we were given all directions to make it work. There are lots of details that have to be modified to make the full-stack work online.

I am definitely learning a lot more that I expected to during this project. I learn new ways of how to troubleshot problems and research solutions online or ask my team members for guidance. My team members are a huge help to me because they have more experience than I have.

I hope other students also have had a good experience during this class so far.

February 9, 2023