My Programming Journey to Javascript
16 Jan 2019Java Experience
Beginning as a high school student, who had absolutely no knowledge in programming, the first language that I started with was Java. Initially, I learned about assignment statements, functions, and loop variants. Then, the idea of a class and object really had me contemplating for a while. I never fully understood it until I attended university. ICS 111 was the course that made understand most topics that were taught in the class, such as classes, objects, and recursion. Next, I learned about the different data structures, how they were used, and their runtime efficiency. Everything about Java has helped serve as a base understanding of a coding language.
C/C++ Experience
Coming into ICS 212, a C/C++ programming course, I felt a lot more confident since I had a learned a previous language. For C language, it was a lot easier to write code, aside from a few syntax differences. Rather than having the concept of class, C had something similar which is called a structure. C/C++ were developed before Java, so I was able to visualize the transition and development of Java. The only new concept was the usage of pointers. Being able to access memory with an address is very useful at times but can also be confusing depending on how they were implemented.
Javascript Experience
In ICS 314, a software engineering course, I had my first experience with Javascript through an online learning course that discussed about the new syntax, and how to create and access data. After a week of learning and practicing, writing variables and functions were very straightforward to implement. Another thing that was different was building, accessing, and updating objects. Based on my current experiences with Javascript, I would say Javascript is a good programming language for software development and for programmers. One of the main reasons for its high usage, is that HTML and most browsers implement Javascript which allows for frontend web development.
Athletic Software Engineering
I began learning about athletic software engineering in ICS 314. Going through the process seemed very new to me because I had always taken my time in writing code. In the course, there are work outs of the day (WOD), that requires the person to write program that will fulfill the requirement within a timeframe. The course provided practice WODs which were very helpful to succeed in the actual and graded WODs. On my first WOD, the goal was fairly straightforward, but my code did not actually work properly. Near the end of the timeframe, the reason for not working was due to a syntax error. Personally, I find this style of learning to be stressful, mainly because of the pressure of being timed. However, I do believe that it will help develop a skill to implement code in a short amount of time.