Capstone Progress

With the Winter 2024 semester coming to an end, it is essential to give an overview of my experiences and my group’s progress while working on the Secure Password Manager.

Quick little reminder of the project itself. The Secure Password Manager is a web application that allows a user to create their own account and store their login information from any websites they want to, securely. This allows a user to create passwords that are unique and more random without having to worry about remembering them. This results in enhanced digital security against cyber attacks. The Secure Password Manager is a perfect choice for anyone that wants to further secure themselves in a world where cyber attacks are happening all the time, with data leaks that can prove detrimental to a person’s livelihood.

As for progress itself, this semester has been incredibly productive. Within the project, we have four different functional areas, Authentication, UI, 2FA, and an API. At the time of writing this post, we have all mostly completed our individual areas and are ready for integration. The only work left to do is combine everything together through the UI and the first version of the application will be ready which (if everything goes to plan) will happen in the next few days.

Now what did I do specifically? As I mentioned in my previous blog posts, I was responsible for authenticating the user. In other words, ensuring that a user’s data remains secure for themselves without any other unauthorized access. To do so, I chose to use Supabase, an open source Firebase alternative. I won’t go too in depth here, but I had to create various functionality that allows a client to access the Supabase database and implement logic that denies/accepts a user. Overall, I believe I greatly benefitted from this experience as it was the first time I truly dived into a backend functionality, while stilling understanding everything that is going on. I don’t think I would choose another database provider as Supabase has served all of the needs of the project, with much more functionality available if needed.

Since we are nearing the end of the semester, I wanted to go over my own experience and the techniques that I used to succeed in my classes. Some context, this semester I chose to take 4 CS classes while also partaking in a Software Engineering internship. By no means was this semester easy. The BIGGEST action that I took that helped me was to get ahead of schoolwork. To do so, I did end up taking a few days every so often where I slept very little, and ONLY focused on my work whether that be coursework or internship work. While I may not have felt too good then, the sense of relief and extra time afterward is worth it. While sacrificing personal health may be a unique viewpoint, I believe that it incredibly beneficial in getting extra work done with high quality. My work during the beginning of the term was amazing and I was more relaxed. This was due to the fact that I took some long nights and stayed ahead of due dates. However, towards the end, I slowed down a little and found myself with more stress and lower quality of work as a result. Now I am forced to play catchup on my assignments. Staying ahead is the MOST important thing to do when looking at schoolwork. It not only relieves stress, but it also results in higher quality results as you are not rushing yourself.

Anyways, I am off to do some more work on the Secure Password Manager. Good luck on finals everyone! See you next term!