New beginning

This is my last course of the Web Design and Development before a 6 week work placement to end off the program.

Because of this program, I can say that I am a better programmer. Our teacher taught us the theory and practical applications of object-oriented design that any programmer would benefit from every few years; as a review.

I am quite pleased with the program and with my ability to develop websites and write cleaner, more efficient code.

Thank you Mr Matthew Campbell for teaching us and always answering our questions.


00000011 cheers for binary!

Advanced C#

Another round of C# has been completed. I have found that there is one main lesson that I have learned while taking this program, understanding what the problem is before trying to solve it.
There is much room for interpretation when being asked to create software. Documenting the problem, reaching a solution that the end client is looking for and not introducing new problems is key to ensuring that the software is developed correctly.
As long as you know what the problem is, you can be successful and avoid common pitfalls; take scope creep as an example.

Next week we start Java; I have been waiting for this course for the last 7 months. Full speed ahead!

A cup of java while looking over a script

My imagination is wearing a tad thin, but I try. I just finished the javascript course, and I must say I really enjoyed it. One day  last week everything just clicked and I have been rather enjoying html, css, javascript and ActionScript on a whole new level.

Viva Web De!velopment

Flash... Thunder

If I know my audience, you are all waiting for a clever BoB reference... there it is.

This past weekend, I used Flash to animate an intro to a website. It was fun, like After Effects with more of an http flavour. I also appreciated seeing how dynamic web pages became when we worked with Flash in class; it took pages from nice all the way to slick.

It has taken a while for my brain to get back into the design side of things, when I get into code land sometimes I get lost, thinking of algorithms and other lovely such things like, what is an algorithm? Flash helped to bring me back the creative side of things and I am hoping to find that perfect balance between coding and creativity in the next few weeks.

Bring on the ActionScript. JavaScript, we shall meet soon.

Dream for Websites

We have just completed a two week course in website design using Adobe Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is a powerful tool and I appreciate how powerful it is but I am happy that we first started looking into website design with Notepad++. Dreamweaver is great but there are a few bugs to work through to get a site working exactly the way you want it to, and that is the reason why Notepad++ has a slight edge in my books. In my mind, it is never a good idea to get comfortable with an application doing most of the work for you; it has the potential to make debugging a site a nightmare.

Off to learn about Flash and Flash actionscript

DATE_ADD(CURR_DATE, INTERVAL 1 YEAR)

This past course, Database Design, has given me a refresher in SQL and was able to get into a scripting mindset. To get to the meat and potatoes of this blog, I must answer what future plans I have for the database that I designed in this course. Within a year from today, I plan to build on the task and client section of my database to allow for time tracking, task management and invoicing. On a side note I also have plans to create a basic database for websites but will figure that out after I start the web design portion of this program.

Happy Easter!

cSharpProject.Dispose()

Today we presented our C# projects in class. It was nice to see the various ways my classmates decided to solve the problems at hand. Each project was impressive and the different approaches allowed me to appreciate and take note of the alternate ways of solving problems.

During the course of the project, I found that I needed to revisit the uml diagrams created when designing the application. Throughout the design process I made adjustments to my classes and to the database design. To ensure I solved the problem according to the project's specifications, I made minor changes after coding and constantly referred to the requirements for the project. In summary, analysing the problem I needed to solve before designing and coding my application, allowed me to deliver a working system within a relatively short period of time while staying in scope.