First Blog Post: Best Computing Experiences
The best in-class coding experience I’ve had was in Programming Analysis, which I took over the summer. In that course, I worked on writing an extension to Google’s Error Prone static analysis tool. My extension scanned Java codebases and flagged the use of “magic number” literals, encouraging developers to replace them with named constants for improved readability and maintainability. Each of us independently extended a different part of the checker, which allowed us to work autonomously and dive deeply into our own implementation challenges. Later, we brought our work together and presented our individual components so they could be merged into a single, cohesive tool. I especially enjoyed this structure because it mirrored real-world collaborative development: independent contributions that ultimately combined to produce a meaningful, shared improvement.
My best out of class coding experience was building a personal website. Going into the project, I had little to no experience with web development, so learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript entirely on my own out of class was very refreshing. Without the pressure of deadlines or grades, I found the process extremely relaxing and engaging and being able to immediately see the visual results made the learning experience very rewarding.