Weekly Journal : Improvement Reflection

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. —Will Durant

This exercise is intended for you to reflect on your journals, projects, team experiences to see how much progress you have made during the semester, and also where you can still improve after completing the course.

Submitting Your Work

Submit a Markdown formatted plain text file, named week15_improvement.md, to the individual portfolio_NETID repository provided for you in the course's Gitlab group.

Specification

Habits

A goal this semester was developing new habits around your programming process to practice and develop in order to improve your baseline coding experience. This goal was added based on the belief that you are the result of your habits because, fundamentally, they shape how you start, make progress on, and ultimately finish projects. But, perhaps, ultimately it is not just doing something habitually, but making sure you reflect on the outcomes of those habits to ensure they improve the quality of your coding skills.

Take a moment to think about all the possible habits you were exposed to this semester (beyond simply clean coding, such as when to design, individual or pair coding sessions, how you think about programming process, project management, teamwork, learning, etc.).

• What habits do you think will be worth it for you to continue beyond this course?
• What habits do you think will not be worth it for you to continue beyond this course?
• What habits did you learn about, but did not have time, or understanding, or whatever to practice, that you think might be interesting to explore in the future?

Programming

Programming can be a fun activity (and hopefully it is most of the time), but it is also often a hard, unforgiving, activity. This is especially true as projects get larger and more complex. For some, this course affirms their interest in becoming a full-time software developer; for others, it helps them see what other technical roles are valuable beyond that. Here are two different contrasting perspectives on a software developer career:

• 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Become A Software Engineer
• 5 Reasons Why You Should Become A Software Engineer

Now, take a moment to remember the fun and what can be learned from any programming experience.

• Describe any code that delighted you this semester (your own, a team mate's, a class example, a tutorial example, something from StackOverflow/ChatGPT, etc.)
• Describe your best coding experience or most important thing you learned about coding during this course and what you learned from it
• Describe your worst coding experience during this course and what you have learned from it to help prevent it from happening again in future projects
• What specific technologies or skills beyond basic coding did you find most interesting or develop/discover an aptitude for, i.e., your "super powers" that help you stand out (such as designing, debugging, testing, managing, or GIT, command-line, JFX, XML, etc.)?
• How did these team project experiences help you better understand the roles around developing software?

Personal

Job interviews will certainly assess your technical skills, but they will also ask questions intended to see if you have good soft skills, and just as importantly, to see if you are self-aware of your own abilities and weaknesses. Everyone has weaknesses! Do not pretend to be naturally good at everything! The point of a “what is your greatest weakness” question is not to ensure you have no weakness, but rather to see if you have thought critically about your own skills, can do honest reflection, and care about self-improvement.

Take a moment to reflect on your answers to these questions because they can often make the difference in who gets hired between two technically competitive applicants.

• Think of what you have previously identified as a personal strength. How did this course help to reinforce that belief or help you find new strengths?
• Think of what you have previously identified as a personal weakness. How have you worked to improve upon your weaknesses this semester?
• What personal habits did you learn to stop doing because of your experiences in this course?
• What personal development steps do you want to take to continue to develop your skills after this course?