Week 4 Report

This week was a definite challenge. We got to learn more about ethics, goal setting, and career planning as well as collaborate with our teams and figure out how we can work better, which was cool. Researching for my ethics paper is difficult but it will pay off since I believe this can be a great end product. 

My educational goals in the CS program are: to establish a strong foundation of programming for a future career and to gain teamwork and leadership skills. I want to be able to program a basic 2D game by the end of the program, which I think should be easy to accomplish. I think I will go ahead and take on this project next year when I am a college senior. Beyond this, the learning never ends technically speaking so I am certain to learn far more after graduation. 

My career goals are to first get some internship experience and then get some more experience at an official full time programming job. I am unsure exactly which route I will take but it will be either in data science, game development, or software engineering. The important part to get there is to build a strong portfolio and gain certifications. Afterwards, I will be starting my own company. 

After viewing the ETS page, I believe I will earn a grade in the top 10 percentile at least. This is because I am going to apply myself rigorously not only to the programming aspect of the programming but also study on my own time to boost my mastery of computer science. 

We were able to learn more about goal setting and thinking about our future. I particularly liked creating my personal mission statement, since I already had a clear set of core values when coming into the program. I am staying true to my personal mission statement until the day I die, and perhaps beyond.

Week 3 Report

 This week we learned quite a bit about ethics, study techniques and the CS curriculum at CSUMB. 

For the study tips, I chose the topic of effective note taking techniques, since that is an area where I must improve. I learned about the 2-6 method which is making two columns on a paper and then six columns for actual note taking, where the first two columnists are for highlighting key points. Another good technique is the split page method, where one side of the page is for notes and the other side for highlighting text. We can also add a third column for questions. One of the coolest things I learned is to use colors for note taking, which is proven to help students retain more information. Therefore I bought some colored pens for this purpose. 

In terms of ethics we learned a bunch of new stuff. The key topic is the different ethical frameworks. For instance, there are virtue ethics which refers to a framework based on virtues such as truthfulness, moderation and justice among others. Another important ethical framework is utilitarianism, which refers to a framework based on achieving the greatest good for a majority of individuals. Interestingly, many corporations explicitly claim to be for utilitarianism but in reality much of their actual practices adhere to ethical egoism, which is a framework based on maximizing self-interest. This is a topic I am exploring more in depth in my ethics essay, which will be examining the role of social media platforms regarding the impact on consumers' health and well being. 

We are applying ethical frameworks to the stakeholders of a given issue in technology, which is a great assignment since it teaches us more about the philosophy of the industry while also bolstering our critical thinking and writing skills. As I am beginning to research my ethics essay topic more I begin to realize that every company has an overt ethical framework they claim to follow and then an actual framework and oftentimes they mismatch. 

An assigned reading taught us about what a computer science major needs to know. A portfolio is essential for a computer science major wishing to pursue work in the field. GPA and resumes are relatively worthless compared to the portfolio, and honestly degrees are also probably not nearly as worthy as actual hands-on experience. One of the most underrated skills for computer science majors are good oral communication and collaboration skills, which makes sense in terms of explaining why our CS online program is so team-oriented. Knowing the Unix philosophy and having administration and Linux skills are essential too. There are numerous topics that computer science majors must be decent at, including: operating systems, database systems, computer architecture, data structures, algorithms, various languages, and more. The cool part is our program covers the majority of the necessary skills, from our examination of the CS curriculum. 

The CSUMB CS online program presumes that students follow the code of integrity, which is a reasonable set of rules to maintain academic and personal integrity while completing courses. There are three basic rules: do not submit solutions or code that is not your own, do not share solution code with other students, and an indication must be made whenever external assistance was received on a submitted assignment. These are honestly basic common sense rules to live by, and I have no issue following the code of integrity.

Week 2 Report

 When it comes to studying, three things that I am good at are: maintaining a good study space, getting the main idea when studying, and picking out key words. Three things that I must improve at are: scheduling (especially being more consistent on my schedule), researching areas of confusion more often, and taking more notes. 

In lecture, we learned a fair amount more about the world of programming. JavaScript and Python are the most popular programming languages being used right now. AI is still advancing at a crazy pace. Progress in the technology world is developing at a ridiculous pace, as in exponentially.  Moore's law said that our progress with transistors doubles every year, and in about 25 years one thousand bucks will be able to buy us the computational power of the whole human species, which is insane. We learned that crowdfunding is going to reach 300 billion dollars in 2025, venture capital and initial coin offerings are also peaking in recent times, meaning we are at a point of incredible capital abundance. The cost of bandwidth, storage, and costs of tech creation in general are all plummeting compared to decades past. Telecommunication are over a thousand times cheaper, and we may even have satellite internet soon with starlink and with good connection too. We are going to see over 4 billion minds coming onto the internet in the next seven years, which will almost certainly produce immense technological advancements - even more so than we are seeing now. Brain computer interfaces are something we may see. Experts predict that in about twelve years we can reach longevity escape velocity, or the velocity at which 1 year of life produces technological advancement that extends the average lifespan by more than 1 year. This is both terrifying and exciting in many ways. 

We learned that time, scope, and cost are the main elements of a project. Projects arise in response to specific needs, such as legal or business needs. How a corporation chooses a need to address is decided by urgency and typically follows a routine project proposal to a board who then selects the project(s) that have the highest return on investment. Boards of directors will typically perform project portfolio management to accomplish a cost-return analysis in their decision making on projects. When a board of directors approves a project, the project manager, who is the "ceo" of a project, handles the execution of the project, maintaining position within the project budget, time, and scope. The project manager is the most accountable for ensuring that the project, or in many cases projects, are properly completed. The project manager is the face for the project, and is the go-to contact for any questions or concerns regarding the project. The first skill that project managers have is project management and business knowledge. The second skill is people and workflow management skills, and the third is strategy and leadership skills. Projects have been seen throughout all of history, such as with pyramids. Dupont invented the critical path method in the 1950s, which can help managers to identify the best way to sequence activities in a project. The project management office is the department responsible for managing project related work. Project stakeholders are people who participate in, influence, or are influenced by projects. This means that even a public project restructuring your driveway makes you a stakeholder of that project.

 In the online learning initiative, we got to learn more about teamwork. Specifically, teams with more women, equal participation and high social sensitivity are more successful because they have more collective intelligence. Even at google we noticed that teams are looking for people who are great team players and have dynamic, flexible thinking. 

In the writing lab, we got to improve our writing skills and learn how to write for a specific target audience. We went over different errors that might be made such as using cliches, not properly citing, and making personal references. I also learned how to peer review another person's paper, in this case I was able to peer review 2 of my teammates' papers. This is a helpful skill because critiquing others' work is important if someone is in a small team of developers. By helping them to improve, I can also learn more at the same time so everyone wins.

For our industry analysis, I learned a ton about the game development industry, which is my chosen topic for our industry analysis assignment. For starters, game developers need specific skills in order to succeed. Soft skills, teamwork, good communication, and expertise among various languages such as Java, C++, C#, and with game engines such as Unity and Unreal. The industry is still growing, and it actually did have a small boom during the COVID-19 pandemic as many people who were locked down chose to game more often. There were certain games like Genshin Impact which were mini pioneers in the style of free-to-play-with-in-game-transactions, particularly during the pandemic. Moving forward, it is the free-to-play-with-in-game-transactions games that look to be dominating the market, especially mobile games.Therefore, one could consider mobile game developing a potential future career if they were to be interested in the field. That being said, we can never be too certain since new avenues with VR and AR can play a huge role in the next few years or not, depending on many factors.

Week 1 Report

This was the first official week of CS online for us. So far, I have learned quite a bit of new information. I think the most impactful thus far is regarding teamwork. Dr. Tao laid down some serious knowledge for us in his video. In order for team meetings to go well, there must be two elements: an agenda listing the activities of the meeting as well as the time required for each activity. We got to actually practice this with our team meeting minutes assignment, which was cool to create and execute. 

We were able to learn all about APA formatting in preparation for our first major paper, as well as how to create a good outline. Admittedly I already have experience with writing APA formatted papers, but getting refreshers is always welcome. We had to pick an industry to research for our paper, and I decided to go with game development. So far the research has been good. I learned that the game industry is expected to rise even further, especially with the looming integration of AI, VR, and even augmented reality. I also read that the industry boomed from 2019 to 2020, which is not surprising since that was when the novel coronavirus showed up. 

For our online learning initiative (OLI) work, we were able to take a quiz testing our traits in regards to teamwork beliefs. I'm still unsure what the main purpose of that was, though I presume we will learn it soon. The first module had us review a video of a team meeting which went poorly. It taught me how important it is to be organized and to be mentally flexible and dynamic when collaborating with others. Compromising and finding middle ground is extremely important, when in times of clashing ideas. 

We also learned how to setup our LinkedIn account, as well as this blog account. We got to learn all about CSUMB as well, my favorite fact is that it was built way more recently than I thought - in 1994. Furthermore, it was basically built over ex-military base property (Fort Ord). Since I live not too far from campus, I intend to visit it again one day, although honestly it may not be until graduation next year.