CST 438 Week 3

    React is like a whole new world compared to what I've been used to. I’ve mostly been doing HTML, CSS, and vanilla JavaScript before diving into React, and to be honest it's been a blast learning the framework.

    First, I learned that React is all about components. Everything becomes a component, and our team noticed this when we were building our frontend components for our web app. If you've ever built a site with vanilla JS, you might’ve had to deal with a bunch of DOM manipulation, manually updating elements, and keeping track of which parts of the page need to change. With React, you basically just make these self-contained components and React does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. If something changes in your data, React re-renders only the parts of the page that need to update, which is way easier than trying to manually update stuff with JS. I like that React uses JSX, which is kinda like mixing HTML with JavaScript. It feels like I'm writing HTML, but I can also use JavaScript in the same file. It’s cool because you can easily write logic for rendering parts of the page based on the data.

    But I’ll be real, React can be a bit overwhelming at first. You’ve got things like state, props, hooks, and context to learn. If you're used to just sticking everything in a single HTML file and throwing JavaScript in there, it can feel like you’re juggling a lot of new concepts. I struggled a bit with how to manage state in React at first—it’s not like vanilla JS where you just use global variables or something.React projects can get pretty messy if you don’t manage your code properly. Since you’re building your app with a bunch of components, things can get a little chaotic if you don’t structure your project well from the start. Also, React’s learning curve can be steep for newcomers—especially with things like hooks and state management.

    Overall, I’m liking React so far, but it definitely feels like a whole new way of thinking about building web apps. Though it can get confusing sometimes, it is very useful and powerful for web developers. I'm looking forward to leveling up my React knowledge as we build more of our cst 438 project.

CST 438 Week 2

A Mock is basically a fake version of something your code depends on, like a database or an API, that you use in unit testing. Instead of calling the real thing, which might be slow or unpredictable, a mock just returns whatever you tell it to. This helps keep tests simple, fast, and consistent because you control exactly how the mock behaves.

Mocks are super useful because they let you test one piece of code without worrying about the rest of the system. They make tests run faster since you're not waiting on real databases or external services. Plus, they help you check if your code handles different situations properly, like errors or missing data. In JUnit, a tool like Mockito makes it easy to create and use mocks, so you can focus on testing just what matters.

Let’s say you’re building a shopping app, and there’s a method that calculates the total price of a customer’s order. This method needs to fetch product prices from a database. But in a unit test, you don’t want to actually connect to the database because it’s slow and could change over time. Instead, you use a mock to fake the database and return fixed prices.

For example, if a customer buys two items, the mock can be set up to return $10 for one and $20 for the other, so you know the total should be $30. This way, you can test if your calculation method works correctly without depending on a real database. Plus, you can easily test different cases, like what happens if an item is missing or if the database throws an error. This makes your tests faster, more reliable, and easier to control.

 

CST 438 Week 1

This week in CST 438, we were introduced to various basic software engineering concepts that more or less confirmed my preconceptions regarding the course's content. 

Before the beginning of our course term, I had already heard from a few prior students what we may learn. Namely, the basics of git version control, agile method, and the software development lifecycle, including collaborating in a team environment. It turns out we are in fact going to learn these techniques in our course, CST 438, which thrills me, especially since these are real world industry skills. I will admit that most of our academic CS curriculum has been overly theoretical thus far (and indeed this is probably the status quo opinion of someone working in the current tech industry), so being able to learn practical skills such as testing, agile, scrum meetings, git projects, behavior driven development, while also bolstering our knowledge of modern technologies such as react, java, AWS, and Git among other, is an absolute gift. I'm very much looking forward training and improving alongside my team during this term.