As a current third year college student with zero experience with coding prior to joining the ICS program during my sophomore year, learning the fundamentals of JavaScript wasn’t exactly a difficult task. In this program, all students are required to learn the basics of computer science and programming with the Java programming language as prerequisites, no matter what background or experience one may have. Learning in Java first, in my opinion, made it easier to learn the fundamentals of JavaScript within the first week of the current semester. Some basic similarities between the two languages that made it easier to learn JavaScript were programming concepts like loops and conditional statements.
I think the hardest part about learning JavaScript so far is ES6, which can be a great way to shorten code, but as it’s still a new concept to me, I don’t feel completely comfortable using it for my programs. As a new JavaScript programmer, I am unable to determine whether or not it’s the best language for software engineering, but I definitely enjoy it more than I have coding in Java during previous semesters.
The format of this course is something that I will need to get used to. Coming into this course and reading the syllabus, the idea of athletic software engineering frightened me a bit. I have never experienced writing code within a short time limit so far in my academic career but my goal for this class is to be a more confident programmer and to work better under pressure. I find the practice WOD’s to be useful. It is definitely stress inducing, but it forces me to learn how to deal with that stress. So far, there have been no surprises in the practice WODs and it genuinely tests what we learned from the previous week. I think the most enjoyable part of this style of learning is when the code runs perfectly, especially when it’s completed well before the “Did Not Finish” time. It feels rewarding to know that I am absorbing the course material well, despite ICS 314 being known as a difficult class. As the semester progresses, I think this learning style could be something that I enjoy and am comfortable with.