Ok, so it’s been 3 weeks without writing down anything :P. I don’t have any excuses but the thing called other modules. That includes midterms and deadlines (assignment 2 too). So all are over, and here I am writing updates about what happed so far.
It’s been a painful yet fruitful week, the last week before assignment 2 deadline. After spending nights working at the back end and implementing functionalities (and get them done), I was quite excited about finishing our assignment. Finishing strong :P. However I was a little disappointed when the UI part cannot handle all the functionalities on time. We can only finish the basics. It’s also a big lesson for me about planning and managing work, to avoid the situation that I finish features before the desire deadline, and then go on implementing “cool” features with a hope that the UI part can handle it on time. Instead I should learn how to work in the UI part earlier, to help my UI teammates at that time. It’s suck to finish my part, and watching your teammates working desperately to meet the deadline but can’t help them because I am not familiar with the API. But it’s over now (the deadline I mean :D), and one very big lesson learned.
Besides that, it’s very irritating when you are shown a UI mockup, and you know you don’t like it, but don’t have any suggestions (because you can’t think of any!) and don't know what is best to say. I often say to the designer that it’s ok, thinking that it’s like refusing all their effort working on the UI. But I know it’s not the right way for the application development process, I know. Hmm.
On the peer appraisal, my main “bad” and “need to improve” point is too quiet, need to speak up more. That’s true I admit, and I will spend time improving my communication skills seriously. (There are more problems can be solved by good communications more than I thought). And my presentation skills as well, as I observe, there is a huge gap between me and my classmates about this. Another “need to improve” point that made me think a lot, is “Familiarize yourself with real start-ups and how they operate”. It’s true, I don’t know much about sales, management or marketing sides. But I always think that it’s more useful to spend time picking up a new programming language, or a design pattern, than reading about cash flow and business models. I do not oppose these, I know they are among the “must”s when building a company, but then, there is business guy in the company too. Nevertheless, I often think that I will learn these skills at one time, when I think I’m full of programming languages and technology, but it doesn’t happen yet, so … yeah, I will pick up them later :-)
No comments:
Post a Comment