Shortly after writing my introductory post covering the various projects available to students in the capstone course, project assignments and groups were announced. As it turns out, I did not get my first project pick (the 8088 Emulator), but rather got assigned to my second choice – Software Programming Quiz. This is not a terrible thing as most of the projects I’ve worked on throughout my CS journey thus far have been in the realm of web development, however I must admit that I’m a bit disappointed that I wasn’t able to work on my first choice for the project.

I met my teammates shortly after the project assignments were announced, and they both seem like motivated, hard-working group members. Both have full-time jobs and are located on the West Coast, whereas I am unemployed and located on the East Coast, so there is a bit of time-zone difference effect at play. For instance, our weekly standup meetings are currently scheduled for 10:30 P.M. on Mondays, which is a bit later than I’d prefer (I usually go to bed shortly after 11:00 P.M.). However, I realize it’s important to be flexible and accommodating for the benefit of the team, and I’m therefore fine with the later-than-usual meeting times.

One potentially more serious issue is the technology stack chosen to complete the project. My team has chosen to use Microsoft’s .NET / C# to do the project with, which I have exactly 0 experience working with. During our initial meeting, in which we roughly split up project responsibilities, I volunteered to work on the front-end part of the application. Literally all of my front-end experience has been completed using JavaScript (and/or React), and therefore I’m a bit concerned that I will have trouble getting up to speed and providing meaningful contributions to the project.

I plan to spend the next several days getting my development environment set up, and watching tutorials on .NET development in order to prepare myself as best as possible for the upcoming work. With that being said, I feel somewhat confident that I’ll be able to contribute in a meaningful way, as I know from the class introductory posts board that several students are tackling projects in languages / frameworks with which they have no prior experience. In fact, it’s kind of exciting to be learning a new technology, and it’s always useful to add new skills to my web development toolset.

As the project gets underway, I’m still feeling optimistic about things overall. I feel lucky to have gotten a good group, a project that is interesting to me personally, and something that will teach me a new skill. That’s it for this update… until next time!