Lisa Cheng

Thank you, Neopets!

18 Jan 2023

How it all started

Honestly, my interest in web development stemmed from my adventures in playing Neopets. Neopets is a virtual pet website that was launched in late 1999. I wanted to learn HTML solely because I wanted to customize my profile page and make it look “pretty.” Fast forward to now, my first experience with Javascript was last week, completing the exercises in freeCodeCamp. In freeCodeCamp, I was also exposed to ECMAScript, specifically ES6, which was released in 2015.

Java versus Javascript

Although Java and Javascript sounds similar, I learned that these two programming languages have key differences. Javascript, along with HTML and CSS are the three main languages to building websites. Having spent a year learning Java and declaring variable’s types, it felt a little strange to not have to do that with Javascript. I quickly learned about the more relaxed syntax rules for Javascript. Another difference is that in Javascript, arrays can contain multiple types and functions are first class. Although Javascript seems more forgiving than Java, I do not think one is necessarily “better” than the other – it depends on what you want to do with programming.

Athletic software engineering

“Athletic Software Engineering” is a pedagogy developed by Dr. Philip Johnson and is what we are currently using in this class. It involves “a high intensity, time-constrained, and often stress-inducing approach to acquiring competency with software engineering skills.” Every week, we have a “WOD” (workout of the day), which we only have a limited amount of time to complete a coding problem. These weekly WODs are graded on an “all or nothing” approaching, meaning you either get a 100 for completing it or you get a 0.

For me, I do find this style of learning to be stressful because the time limit can be daunting and distracting. However, after completing a few practice WODs, I am beginning to really like this style of learning because I feel like I am actually learning and it gives me the incentive to practice every day. I do believe that coding is a skill, and to get better at it, you need to do it consistently. I am nervous but also looking forward to developing my software engineering skills from this class, because web development is one of my interests in computer science.