ICS 413 has been a very eye opening experience for me. I was able to apply what I learned before from previous Java classes which I enjoyed since I don't like to learn things and not get to see some practical application for it.
Valuable Experiences:
I found that most of the class provided very valuable information and incite to the world of software development. I think that the group experience was the best part as we were able to share knowledge and see different views on how to solve a problem. SVN in particular was an interesting experience since we were able to work on the project even if we weren't together, plus the ability to revert to a previous version was a nice feature for the projects. Also the Ant tools added an interesting aspect to the development process as it allowed for testing and the catching of errors that we otherwise might have missed when just looking over or simply just running the code and assuming there are no errors. Lastly I thought that Wicket gave some interesting experience as well as an introduction to web frameworks.
More Experience:
The only thing I felt needed improvement in the class was the coverage of Wicket. I found that Wicket was a particularly difficult language to get a hold of and I thought that the book did a fairly poor job of explaining how Wicket works, plus having it available to only 4 people at a time was a major inconvenience. With that said I think that more time should be spent on Wicket in order for students to full grasp and get the hang of using the language.
More Learning:
After taking this class, I have come to realize that I do not want to become a software developer. While I did enjoy working in groups, I found that software development is extremely time consuming and has the potential to be extremely frustrating. So really I have no interesting in continuing my learning in this area. However if I had to choose an area, I would like to learn more about web frameworks (maybe not Wicket) and how they integrate with Java, HTML and various other languages.
Overall:
I found this class to be extremely helpful in that it gives a great overview of the process and the tools of software development. I enjoyed the experiences from this class, not only for the basic knowledge of software development and the great experience of working in groups but also the fact that this course has helped me decide what I would like to do with my ICS degree when I graduate (most likely networking and IT work).
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Greensmart Ver. 2.0
Greensmart Ver. 2.0 saw some major changes as well as some minor changes from the 1.0 version. We fixed the bugs found in version 1.0 and improved the overall look and feel of the website.
What does this do?
This project has two options. You can view the stoplight page or view the chart page. Should the user go to the stoplight page then they will find that there is a stoplight there that displays the current level of carbon intensity with a specific message to the color. If the user chooses to go to the chart page then they can select a date or a range of dates and the data will be displayed in chart form.
Changes:
Originally we only had one page which took a date and then printed the resulting carbon intensity, carbon intensity level and the hour in a long chart that didn't fit on a screen. However in version 2.0 we changed that. Now there is a home page where you can choose to go to either the chart page (which displays carbon intensity data) or the stop light page which takes the current computer time and calculates the carbon level then displays the results on a stop light with a corresponding message depending on the color of the level. On the chart page we now use Google Charts to graph the carbon intensity and the hour and use background colors to show the level of the intensity instead of printing everything out in a table. Also the user is now able to choose to graph either the carbon intensity or the energy for a given time period.
We also changed the look of the page by changing the background color to the color white and also added "web 2.0" buttons and a new logo that we designed ourselves. Also we created a contacts page and now all of the pages have links to all of the other pages of our project which makes navigation around the site a breeze. To further improve the look of the page we incorporated the date picker to the chart page so now the user has the option to visually pick out which date or which date ranges of data they wish to view.
In addition to the date picker the other extra credit option that we choose to implement was the nice urls. This eliminates the strange wicket generated urls and replaces them with text which gives the project a more professional look to it.
Lessons Learned:
Through this project I was able to gain basic knowledge of Wicket and how it interacts with both Java and HTML. Another thing that I learned was while the project might meet the specifications (like our ver. 1.0), the user interfaces must be easy and friendly to use without too much clutter and a lot of intuitiveness for ease of use for any user no matter how computer literate they are. Lastly I realize that had the option been available it would have been better for us to specialize in certain areas of the project. For example one person does the HTML work, one person does the Wicket and one one person works on the Google charts, ect. Specialization would have allowed for less errors as well as a faster production time.
What does this do?
This project has two options. You can view the stoplight page or view the chart page. Should the user go to the stoplight page then they will find that there is a stoplight there that displays the current level of carbon intensity with a specific message to the color. If the user chooses to go to the chart page then they can select a date or a range of dates and the data will be displayed in chart form.
Changes:
Originally we only had one page which took a date and then printed the resulting carbon intensity, carbon intensity level and the hour in a long chart that didn't fit on a screen. However in version 2.0 we changed that. Now there is a home page where you can choose to go to either the chart page (which displays carbon intensity data) or the stop light page which takes the current computer time and calculates the carbon level then displays the results on a stop light with a corresponding message depending on the color of the level. On the chart page we now use Google Charts to graph the carbon intensity and the hour and use background colors to show the level of the intensity instead of printing everything out in a table. Also the user is now able to choose to graph either the carbon intensity or the energy for a given time period.
We also changed the look of the page by changing the background color to the color white and also added "web 2.0" buttons and a new logo that we designed ourselves. Also we created a contacts page and now all of the pages have links to all of the other pages of our project which makes navigation around the site a breeze. To further improve the look of the page we incorporated the date picker to the chart page so now the user has the option to visually pick out which date or which date ranges of data they wish to view.
In addition to the date picker the other extra credit option that we choose to implement was the nice urls. This eliminates the strange wicket generated urls and replaces them with text which gives the project a more professional look to it.
Lessons Learned:
Through this project I was able to gain basic knowledge of Wicket and how it interacts with both Java and HTML. Another thing that I learned was while the project might meet the specifications (like our ver. 1.0), the user interfaces must be easy and friendly to use without too much clutter and a lot of intuitiveness for ease of use for any user no matter how computer literate they are. Lastly I realize that had the option been available it would have been better for us to specialize in certain areas of the project. For example one person does the HTML work, one person does the Wicket and one one person works on the Google charts, ect. Specialization would have allowed for less errors as well as a faster production time.
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