Wow, this semester has really gone by fast! As this is my last blog post as an undergraduate student, I wanted to use this post to sum up my entire college experience and reflect on everything that's happened over the last few years. Then reality kicked in and I realized that wasn't going to happen...I would need a whole other blog and the fortitude of a level 20 elf mage to even consider such a feat. Instead, I'm going to sum up the last two Software Engineering classes. Here it goes...
Actually, I can sum up the course sequence in two words: teamwork and open source. Both were vital components for the classes and together formed the kernel of what was needed to complete the course work. Make no mistake about it, learning to work with a team is no easy task. In our case, you are dealing with the personalities and habits of four other people who you barely know, having to communicate and coordinate with these people, and your grade depends on it! It can be a scary prospect when first starting out in 362 (the first Software Engineering class). On the flip side of that, it is also a rewarding experience like no other. You make friends that you will continue to know and talk to outside of class. It is really neat figuring out what everyone's strengths and weaknesses are, and then working with those attributes to balance the workload fairly.
The open source component has been gone over extensively in my previous posts...and now I'm going to add a little more! My position on open source software as a teaching tool is simply this: it gives a full-package, complete experience that I don't see happening any other way. You learn how to use tools like virtualbox and subversion, work with raw source code, communicate with developers, and many other things too numerous to list here. It's been a great year...now onto the real world!
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