Final Reflection

After the last 20 time project, I wasn't quite sure if I wanted to continue coding. I still wanted to do something that could benefit me in the future and I could have fun with, but I didn't know what. It was then when Alex and I came up with the idea of doing a project together. I remember sitting in lunch one day and we were thinking of things to do, when we came up with the great idea of making an app. In the beginning, we had high aspirations. We wanted to make the next big thing, like a Instagram, snapchat or angry birds. However, we knew that we probably wouldn’t be able to reach that goal in time, so we settled for something a little different. We wanted to make something that we could use to benefit ourselves and the ones around us, so we decided on making an app for Magnet, where you could write down your homework, look at upcoming events and things like that. We got our inspiration from the AIT app, which we thought was so good. When we initially started, I figured since I had more experience with coding, I would “lead” Alex and I in this project, but that wasn’t exactly the case. Alex and I agreed that it was best if we both learned on our own, only talking if we had questions for each other, until we would come together in the end to combine our acquired knowledge and build an app. I did the same thing I did last project, and started a few project based tutorials. It was then when I realized that although i had experience with JavaScript, Swift was something completely different. Although the fundamentals of coding were there, like variables, functions, if then statements, it was different because of the platform I had to use, Xcode. Xcode is the program used to make apps. With my last project, I had to actually create a button from scratch using Javascript, but with Xcode, i could drag the button icon onto the user interface and it would appear without having to write any code. The difference was that in order for the button to actually work, I still had to write code to connect what the user “inputs” or does to the button and make it do something in return. That was the hardest part for me. With javascript, coding the game was pretty easy because all i had to do was link up one paddle to the mouse, while with an app, there are many things users can tap on and do. Along the way in this project, I created a simple calculator, and a MadLibs app, but both weren’t really my work as i had just created them along with a tutorial, so it didn't feel like i was truly coming up with something from scratch.  Nonetheless, I continued learning how to navigate around Xcode and writing in swift. However, it is now that I understand why google, Facebook and other companies have teams of 100s of people to work on and maintain their apps. It is not easy work, and it is very time consuming, which is why Alex and I were unfortunately unable to make an app in the end. This is a big disappointment for the both of us, seeing how we both had high goals. However, there were some good takeaways from this. I learned how having a partner to work with is beneficial. Knowing that someone was depending on me to do my part of the job and learn at the same rate as him kept me on task, which was something i struggled with last project. Also, I continued to improve my problem solving skills, and even began to see real world situations where my coding experience came into hand. Like in Mr. Liu's class, we learned about conditional, converse, inverse, and contrapositive statements, which are all basically if and then statements, and I was one step ahead of the game thanks to my coding experience. All in all, from last project to this one, I gained valuable knowledge that I will continue to try and grow in the future.