In an attempt to flee their imprisonment on island of Crete, the mythical Greek figure Daedalus builds wings for himself and his son, Icarus, out of feathers and wax. He warns Icarus of the potentially dangers of flying: the wax would melt if flown too close to the sun, and the feathers would fail if flown too close to the sea. During the attempted escape, Icarus flew higher and higher until the wax melted and the wings failed. He plunged into the ocean below and drowned. This story uses two metaphors; one flying too low represents complacency, and flying too high represents pride. Although pride proved Icarus’ downfall, either extreme results in proverbial drowning.
Flying Too High
Throughout the OSU Computer Science program I faced down my own Icarus experiences. However, the first Software Engineering course (CS361) stands out from the rest to me. The course is structured around a five-person group project with two week Sprints imitating the Scrum Agile philosophy. My group worked to develop an application that allowed the user to search a database of profiles based on expertise in a technical skill, an OSU course, or an outside institution or corporation.
My Icarus experience started during the third of the five sprints. The group met to finalize the technology stack for the application, and decided on a web-based app. I shared my web dev experience with the group (mostly Node.js using Handlebars templates connected to a MySQL database). In an effort to be a good teammate, I stated my desire to learn new frameworks and technologies and would go with what the consensus.
My pride in my technical ability allowed me to believe that I could learn any technical skill the group would decide on. Like Icarus, my ability to fly high took my whole focus. My group ended up decided on using an architecture, front-end framework, an ORM, and a database provider I had never worked with before; I had never used an ORM, period. In two weeks I needed to start learning these technologies and begin my feature’s prototype. The feature need to be completely working at the end of six weeks.
Drowning
The problem lay in the other aspects of my life that needed attention. During that time I was enrolled in two other courses at the same time with their own set of work while working 25 hours a week stocking shelves, keeping a significant other happy, and taking care of my own basic needs. My drowning experience came from not having enough time to fulfill all of these commitments. With schoolwork demanding so much of my time, I started to cut back on sleeping hours. My gym routine and social interactions soon followed. I resorted to cooking less and eating more junk to cope with my declining mental health.
Throughout the course I acquired the full stack development skills necessary to turn in a working version of my feature thanks to a lot of hard work, dedication, and cooperative teammates. I passed all of my classes; I maintained my part time job and my relationship. I also gained ten pounds, lost my sleep schedule, and sank into a loneliness that I found difficult to cope with.
Persevere in Flight
This quarter I’m taking a course with a similar project structure, the Capstone Project course (CS467). Choosing my potential projects, I reflected on my CS361 project to ensure I wouldn’t undergo another Icarus experience. While a variety of the potential project drew my interest in areas of malware analysis to game design to multi-platform capabilities, I had to balance the course expectations with my full time software engineering job, my significant other, and my own health. Therefore, I limited my options to web applications due to my experience working with them.
I’m still expecting to learn a lot, as I haven’t worked on a project of this scope before. There will be late nights debugging code, trips to StackOverflow, and asking for help concerning a particular blocks of code. I’m excited to get the chance to hone my raw web development skills built over the past two years. I will follow the advice of Daedalus, and fly between complacency and pride to have a fruitful, healthy quarter.
