I feel that throughout this course up until now, I have learned many things about programming that I have never known about before. One of the main things that I have improved on is learning how servers in html work to coincide with the client. One lab that was able to help me understand how servers work is lab 13. Going through lab 13 and seeing how commands such as app.get and app.post affect the web page really helped me understand and improve on creating a working server. Also, working on Assignment 1 really helped me see how far I have come with .html and javascript coding by creating a real working web page. Although it may not be much, I am able to visualize the amount of work that was put into this simple website.
One thing that I feel I need to work on to improve my programming is by understanding more about the server side processing and what exactly do I need to put on the server side, and what codes I need to put on the .html/client side. As there was so much information to take in about the server side processing, I just feel that I need to understand a bit better of how they work. Referring to my answer above, even though I know a bit more about how the server affects the client, I am still not sure as to exactly what functions I need to put in and where to put them in order to make certain things work. One example from Assignment 1 being that I wasn't too sure how to change the "quantity available" after the customer has purchased an item. This is a direct result from the invoice page, and understanding how the client needs to take the information from that invoice page and refresh the new products display page so that it updates.
I do have to agree with the fact that I have learned a lot from the WODs, as they have gave me many examples that I could follow when working on present and future work in this class. However, for many of the WODs, I was not able to do them without the help of the screencast, because sometimes I would get stuck with certain codes. I also feel that sometimes I wouldn't understand what the instructions were telling me to do specifically, and once I watched the screencast and it showed me what to do, I was able to understand it quickly and apply it later on without the need to watch the screencast again.
The labs have definitely helped me learn, but for almost all of them I had to come in and get help with the "On Your Own" part. The labs helped give me the backbone to what I needed to know when completing most of the work that I had to complete on my own. Although there were certain labs such as lab 13, that I put a lot of time into trying to get the server to work by basing my work off the other exercises in the lab. I felt great once I finally got my code to work, although I am still not too confident that I could complete a similar lab easily.
Working on Assignment 1 has really got me thinking about everything that we have learned throughout this course and putting it to work. Although I do not feel 100% ready to work on Assignment 2 and I will probably have to go in to get help again. But hopefully with lab 14 and being able to create a login page, I can be as ready as I can to work on the next assignment.
One way I feel that the class can be improved is by giving more detailed notes on the specific codes that we use in class so that we know exactly what code does what. For example, I know that the professor pushes his code on Github, which is very helpful in that sense, but sometimes when I read that code, I am not sure what each line of code does. I feel that it would be a bit more helpful if there could be some comments on those codes so that I can reference what I am doing with the notes so I can understand what each code does.
The first thing that I feel I get the most help with is the one on one help. Going in during the office hours has helped me exponentially, and I really do appreciate the extra time the professor puts into helping his students as well as the TA helping as much as he can as well. These one on one sessions allows me to pinpoint what I need to improve on and fix it a lot faster than either trying to look it up my self or referencing it from a lab or WOD. Another thing that helps me in class is the screencasts. The next best thing, in my opinion, than having help from the professor, is to get a recording of the professor doing the same work and explaining what they are doing so that you are able to follow along and understand what the codes are doing rather than just blindly following. For my learning style, I like to know what is happening and why, so I like to watch how to do the work, then break it down in my own way and understand how to do it in reverse.