Assignment 2 was creating a functioning user database, login page, and registration page. There was a specific order that the webpage had to implement before letting the user view their invoice. The user was to first order their quantities, then be taken to the login page where they were required to either login or register a new account. The server had to validate their request with either guards or user validation to check if the password was repeated correctly, the user name was taken, and if the proper error alerts would display in response to the error made.
Please use this following link to view the Assignment 2 instructions: https://dport96.github.io/ITM352/morea/150.Assignment2/experience-Assignment2.html
I learned that Professor Port is the best resource in this class. On a more specific note, I realized that time is very important and to do well in this class is to sacrifice a lot of time dedicated to other courses, my free time, and also just any spare time in general. This Assignment pushed my buttons and not just the buttons for my login/ register page, no, this Assignment made me want to quit a lot of things.
Furthermore, I learned more about myself. My ideology is that you should always push through and even through the things I am unsure about, I would keep putting in the work while asking myself the question “Why not?”. I told myself I would ask myself this question until I ran out of reasons to justify my work and effort. Until this Assignment, I have never reached that threshold where I no longer had any reasons to keep going. Epiphany! This Assignment finally crossed me over into that space where I asked myself “Why not work hard and keep going?” and I no longer had the willpower to continue on in this semester long journey. Poetic, isn’t it? I am a 2nd generation Korean-American and have always tried to work towards “making it in America” and for the first time, out of all the adversity and diaspora I faced, this was the class that nearly made me forget it all. I learned that I had first-world problems because I let this class lay siege to what I considered my mental fortitude.
All courses and things in life are hard, so “why not?”, why not try and put that work in regardless. If I ever had a bane to my own existence, it’s these 6 characters, ITM 352. To think that sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never break me… Wrong… Words will break me, these words in particular: Assignment 2, server validation, login/ register.
I worked by myself. Thank you, next.
In all seriousness, I asked Professor Port for a total of 4-5 one-on-one sessions to not only work through problems but to figure out how I could elevate this Assignment to a level beyond personal satisfaction. Furthermore, I asked Kimberly Matutina, my classmate for assistance and we would Zoom to work through certain problems together.
The problems that I had were mainly query related. My query string would contain errors from previous attempts to check my error alerts and it would carry them over to the login page whenever I tried to login or register. Another problem that I had was having my products display page take the user to the login as I put that code in my server, not through my login. This was the part where I needed to meet with Professor Port as I had just gotten so lost in my own code.
It was not as bad. I would only say that because the foundation was set well. I worked hard on Assignment 1 and organized it in a manner that made Assignment 2 easier to work on.
In terms of the actual work and content, it was definitely different in the fact that I needed to work on both my code (user validation) and the UI (user interface) simultaneously. It would only make it harder on myself if the UI was complicated and unneccessary so I felt that was the main differing point.
To estimate, I spent 30% thinking about how to configure my UI and my pages in a more cohesive manner, 60% writing the code and 10% debugging/ testing. A big portion of my time was spent on writing the code as I had issues with naming my actions or defining variables and this would hinder the time spent referring back to a particular aspect of my code.
Creating my files and writing the CSS for them took the least amount of time and worked well as I had more experience from Assignment 1 and a solid foundation to build upon. There was very little, if nothing, to fix from Assignment 1 so everything was ready to be worked upon from the jump. Another aspect that worked well was asking Professor Port for help, I was not afraid to ask for help before but I felt I was even more bold to ask for advice on UI and more. I was also able to submit my Assignment to the class server well before the submission date so it was great having the time to test my website without 15-20 other people stopping my server to test theirs.
Understanding my own functions and why I placed certain things did not work well because I lacked a lot of conceptual knowledge regarding coding so that proved to be a major disadvantage. I spent too much time working on the code that I was feeling a time crunch in the last 3 days trying to test and making sure everything ran properly before the submission date. Also, even though we were granted an extension, it was still very rough knowing that the time frame to complete Assignment 3 would be greatly shortened.
I always say this but if I could go back in time, I would probably have tried to learn this material before ITM 352 started and hand myself the requirements so I could complete it earlier on in the semester and work on my other classes right now.
All jokes aside, I would start earlier… no matter how much time I’m given, my webpage can never be complete as there are always things I can improve on or prepare for Assignment 3.