The home stretch of the fall term is here! Feels like this term went by very quickly, though I am glad that I have been able to stay caught up with all of my classes while working full-time. I am excited to start working on the bigger aspects of our project and ultimately learn new and useful things as I progress with my team.

Project Deliverables:

In regard to our project, I don’t believe I ever touched on the progress we’re making, or what we are creating exactly. Thus, our group project is to create an artificial life simulation that consists of an environment, genomes/creatures, and resources/objects for the creatures to interact. We are using react frontend and flask backend for communication to retrieve the necessary data. Furthermore, our goal is to grab data from the backend and send it to the front end to be displayed to the user.

My responsibility for V0.0.2

For the implementation of V0.0.2, I have been tasked with creating and displaying the environment that the creatures and objects will be inhabiting. Moreover, the following is the ideal implementation for this versions environment:

• Displays a single topography/region (grasslands, mountains, forest, desert)
• Communication between the creature(s) and the environment such that they’re displayed when retrieved/called by the user.
• The backend sends essential information regarding the details of the environment and objects within it, to the front end.

Team Communication

The communication between my group members has been excellent so far, to say the least. I feel like my team members have a good idea of what needs to be delegated and discussed for each of the week-to-week activities. We recently just held a team meeting in an attempt to strengthen our communication; due to some team members being out of the loop or needing to ask to get the necessary information on the project.

Thus, we all agreed that having more synchronous communication (once a week) will allow us to stay on the same page and have an idea of the progress each team member is making on their portion of the assignment/project. We will be using Trello more frequently to structure and streamline our communication, such that one of our members can visit Trello and see exactly what is being done, what hasn’t been started, and what areas need work/help.

All-in-all, I think this is a great idea for our team as we were struggling to be consistent with asynchronous meetings; I take responsibility for being part of the problem. I don’t think of myself as a leader in this regard, so at times it can be hard for me to speak up and try to “lead” the team in a sense, delegating and evaluating the work that needs to be done. While I have a great idea of the structure and direction of our project, the biggest concern that I have is on the coding end of things; I feel like I am the most inept of our group when it comes to understanding how to code or how the code works, in a variety of different languages. This doesn’t mean that I will give up, but more-or-less I have become aware that I will need to step up my communication for my group’s sake to not see myself as a liability and to maintain the standard of work that they’re putting in.

Hence, going forward, my biggest obstacle will be needing to learn on the fly, but I am confident with the group that I have that I will get the assistance and guidance I need to ultimately create quality work in a timely manner. I’ve heard that the winter term of this class is the most work that we will end up doing, so I will need to prepare myself accordingly so that I don’t let my team, or myself down.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, I hope everyone is doing well!

Regards,

Zack Browning