CSUMB Learning Journal (Chris - Group 1)

  List the 5 most important things that you learned in the course, and why you chose them. Agile development: Agile development seems to be a very common development style in the industry although it is quite new to us as students through this program. I feel as though getting used to it this early on its important to our professional development. React: React seemed to be a very easy to use and expand type of front end language, the only other one I used in the past was Express I believe -- but React seems better suited to my development style. Rest: Similar to React, Rest seemed like a fairly easy to use backend language and I would like to use it again in the future for other projects. Deploying to AWS: AWS is used commonly for countless companies on countless projects and so know how to leverage the tools that AWS has is key to being successful in many job markets. Selenium: Prior to being introduced to Selenium, I didn't know any ways to test a web interface automatically as i...

  Describe some of the differences between using an Agile process and using a  Plan and Document (or Waterfall) process.      The overarching difference between Agile and Waterfall is seen in how Agile generally has a design process that is broken up into smaller sprints with planning intermingled compared to Waterfall which has different stages of the project documented at the start before any development. This generally results in the Agile process being easier to pivot in the middle of development, having higher customer involvement throughout, and lower risk through constant testing in exchange for a lack of a concrete final project vision. Waterfall generally has the final project deliverable planned and documented prior to development which can lead to higher risk involved in testing and a reduce ability to pivot in the middle of development.

  Write a weekly entry describing important things you learned this week. This week we covered the important of Service Oriented Architecture. Among other methods that effectively split a single program into smaller parts that allow for better scaling, uptime, and other performance metrics important for a production environment. In order to practice with these such methods we split our ongoing course project into two pieces, the Registrar and Gradebook service that perform different functions alongside each other, while communicating any database changes through rabbitMQ.

  Summarize in a few sentences what you have learned this week.      This week, we covered several topics focused on documenting project expectations and progress. Among them, Agile development and Use Case Modeling stood out the most. Agile development, the method we've been using throughout the course, relies on user stories to map out project plans. Use Case Modeling involves documenting a project by creating a simple diagram, known as a UML graph, which outlines all the actions actors can take. Actors in a system refer to any external users or systems that may impact the system.