I just re-read my first two posts that I wrote for this blog.
Let me start by saying I am really glad that I took 3216. I haven’t been glad with every assignment I’ve done or some of the work I’ve churned out. But on the whole, I am glad I took this class. I have learnt a lot. And I guess a fair bit of it was not what I was expecting to learnt.
Quite a bit of the stuff I’ve learnt was technical. Things like FBML, PHP, mySQL, JQuery and Sencha. Or even things like how to set up version control (which I still don’t know how to do but at least I now know it exists). I think most of these topics would be quite frivolous for the compsci guys but for an engineer like me they’re quite new and I’m glad for the experience. However the nature of 3216 is that you don’t really learn about these things in depth. Because of the short time frames for most assignments, it’s usually just learning enough to cobble together something that works. Which is alright really, because I know enough to pick up the rest on my own. Google is my friend.
Quite a bit of the stuff I learnt was not technical. Like project management. Or how incredibly important finding the right people to work with is. Or a teeny tiny bit about what to prepare before going into a business meeting.
So I’m basically saying I have learnt a lot of stuff.
My second post was titled finish strong. I’m not sure whether I have. The final project is done and I’m fairly happy with what we produced. There were times during the project that I basically felt like ball of jelly. And there were time I felt I wasn’t pulling my weight in the group.
Also 3216 made me think about other things. I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur and this course actually has made think quite a bit about what really constitutes value. Angry Birds is probably the most famous mobile game and has probably made it’s developers oodles of money. But I think it has zero value. Most people find it a somewhat entertaining way to burn some time (I find it annoying). Do I really just want to be producing things that help people burn time? I’ve been thinking about what I want to do in the future and I hope the things I’m involved in actually do have value. I think technology really is one of the shaping forces of society and is incredibly influential in shaping people’s lives as well. I haven’t got an answer yet about what my way forward is, but I’ll continue to think about it.
