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 Part 1: Looking Back

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• How well do you feel the course actually conveyed these ideas?

  • I feel the course conveyed these ideas very effectively, especially through a consistent balance of theory and practice. The weekly papers provided a strong foundation for understanding key concepts and encouraged critical thinking about design principles, while the in-class exercises gave me opportunities to apply and experiment with those ideas. Having both the theoretical depth from the papers and the hands-on reinforcement from the exercises made the lessons much more memorable and impactful compared to other courses.

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• Were there other lessons or habits you picked up that you think you’ll carry forward?

  • One important lesson I picked up during this course is the value of clear and consistent communication with the people I’m working with. Throughout the semester programming project, strong communication was essential for coordinating tasks and making collective design decisions. In-class exercises also emphasized quick, clear collaboration, while the weekly papers and blog posts helped me practice engaging thoughtfully with classmates’ ideas. Across all these activities, I saw firsthand how much smoother and more effective group work became when communication was prioritized, and it’s a lesson I will carry with me into my career.

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• What tool, technique, or habit required for this course surprised you by becoming something you now find valuable?

  • One tool that surprised me by becoming something I now find incredibly valuable is Postman. Initially, I thought of it as just a basic tool for testing APIs, but over time I realized how powerful it was for building, testing, and debugging complex web services. It became an essential part of my workflow, and it’s definitely something I’ll continue to use in future development work.

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• Compared to your other CS classes at UT, how much did you grow in this course?

  • I feel that my growth in this course was greater than in any of my previous computer science electives. Beyond just improving my technical skills, I developed a deeper understanding of system design, testing, and the importance of thoughtful collaboration. This course pushed me to think more critically and work more intentionally, and I’m leaving it feeling more prepared for professional software development than I have after any other class.

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 Part 2: Your Experiences

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• Continuous Integration

  • Continuous integration was one of the most valuable parts of the course for me. Setting up automated testing and checks made collaboration much smoother during the semester-long project because we could catch mistakes early across the multiple phases we had to submit. The initial setup was a little confusing, especially when Docker was introduced, so having a more detailed walkthrough or an example project would have made it easier to get everything running properly from the start.

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• Docker

  • Docker was challenging at first but ended up being a very helpful tool. Once we got everything running inside containers, it made sharing, testing, and deploying the project across different environments much simpler, which was especially important for our team as the project grew through each phase. The learning curve at the beginning was steep; a short assignment or demo specifically focused on Docker basics would have made the later phases of the project much smoother.

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• Postman

  • Postman ended up being one of the most surprisingly useful tools we used throughout the course. It made API testing much faster and more reliable, and helped us catch issues that would have been difficult to track down otherwise. I wish we had a short demo earlier in the semester so that we could have set it up properly from the start and utilized it more effectively during the earlier phases of the project.

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• UML Diagrams

  • UML diagrams helped our group stay organized after we designed the site’s backend models and began planning for future backend and frontend development. Creating a shared visual representation helped us align on how different parts of the system would interact and made it easier to divide work between team members. Since we only created the UML diagrams once, it would have been helpful to see more examples beforehand to better understand the level of detail expected at that stage and how to best prepare for future expansion of the system.

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• Unit Testing

  • Unit testing was a part of the course that worked really well for me. Writing tests alongside our development work helped catch mistakes early and made it easier to refactor code confidently during each new project phase. I think unit testing could have been emphasized even more with additional examples or small exercises showing how to find the right balance between too few and too many tests, especially as our system became more complex.

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 Closing Encouragement

Stay on top of the project phases and communicate consistently with your team, it makes a huge difference over the course of the semester. If you stay organized and engaged, you’ll leave the class with real skills that will carry over into professional work.

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