The Journey Through Software Engineering
14 May 2020Author: Gunwook Baik
My Adventure through Software Engineering
I made a ton of progress towards my career this past semester in ICS 314. Although I am interested in Video Game Development, taking this class and learning about web design and using Javascript did help me in my endeavor. I’ve talked about my experience with Javascript in the past, and essentially what I said was that, although it isn’t a relevant language used to create video games, the thought-processand logic learned through using it will definitely help me develop experience with coding. Web design using Semantic UI did help me also as it taught me how to use tools given to me, such as Underscore and CSS, to create whatever I may envision. Working on the Final Project with my group members Jake, Bryson, Sean, and Sheena also taught me a bit about what it is like to work with others. Although it may not have been on a scale as large as the companies I hope to work at with hundreds of people working on one project, it was a fantastic opportunity for me to understand the importance of the small things like Coding Standards and keeping good communication, especially since up until now, considering the ICS department has only had one form of teamwork in ICS 111’s final project.
How can UI Frameworks Help a Future Video Game Dev?
Just like how video games developers work with game engines such as Unreal Engine 4, which may contain things like assets for physics, graphics, and so on, we also had our own set of tools to work with in the form of Underscore and Semantic UI. Creating web pages using solely HTML and CSS is fairly simple, but also looks the part as well. It definitely isn’t something you would use in a professional setting where you are trying to create an eye catching website, and the same goes for video game development. You wouldn’t go ahead and make your triple A game using solely Java, you’d just be too limited in what you can do. Using tools like Semantic UI which supply you with a variety of visuals such as buttons, textboxes, and the likes allows you to be more imaginitive in what you want to do with your website. Though it may not include the functionality of the buttons or other Semantic UI assets, it certainly does help with achieving the vision that you may have for your website at the start. Being able to effectively use the tools laid out for you will certainly help you get the results you want in any field.
Coding Standards and its Importance When Working With Others
Working with others is most likely a given when it comes to working as a Video Game Developer. Not only does creating a project all on your own an immense task that many cannot handle, having others working with you gives you multiple perspectives on how an issue should be tackled. This applied to what I did in this class when working with my teammates in designing our website, UH Water Fountains. It’s a given that communication is important when working with others, and one form of that communication is making sure your code looks proper and has comments behind all of them. Issues are bound to happen to every group when working on a project, making sure you code is neat and readable really helps with troubleshooting as it can help you spot problems in the code quickly. This happened a few times while working on our website, where just having a word in its plural form caused our code to break. Sometimes we caught it early before it caused problems, but other times it took us hours trying to find similar problems. Using proper Coding Standards will help you figure out the logic behind any code and quickly find issues in the code.
Even though I may not use these skills in the context of Web Design in my career, my journey to become a video game developer will undoubtedly benefit from what I learned in this class.