E5 Reflecting on Assignment 3 Technical Essay

18 Dec 2020

1.Provide a brief introduction to the assignment along with a link to this page for further details

Assignment 3 focuses on implementing cookies and sessions on a website. By adding those two, users who visit will be able to shop at their leisure. This assignment is an upgrade to the previous website created; new features and functionality such as a shopping cart that stores individual products and the quantity a user wants to purchase. More details can be found here

2.What did you learn from this assignment?

Assignment 3 taught me various things. The first lesson is creating cookies and how cookies work in favor of the site and the user; this means that the cookie will help the site identify the user, and the user will be able to have an easy experience while browsing the site for products. The second is that web developers have it super hard; troubleshooting errors and trying to find where a problem originates from is time consuming. Sometimes, the errors stem from an extra character or misspelling 1 element. Maintaining a server and generating a website is very tedious and details must be closely examined.

3.Did you work with a partner? Assign an estimated percentage on the amount each team member contributed to the assignment (including yourself).

I did not work with a partner on this assignment.

4.How did you get help when you needed it? What did you need help with?

I got help from the internet. Google, youtube, and stack overflow are the main sources of information when I needed help with something. When I was unable to get a clear answer, I asked my friend if he knows what to do when I’m constantly getting errors, like validation problems.

5.How was developing this assignment different than assignment #1?
-Developing Assignment 3 is 3 times harder than assignment 1 due to all the validations and constant back and forth checking to make sure that variables and names of elements match. Storing data onto the server is, personally, the hardest part about this assignment because removing or adding something will come with problems that—for me— aren’t easy to see what’s the cause.

6.Estimate the % of time you spent (a) thinking about how to do something, (b) writing code (but do not include testing, (c) testing and debugging

The estimated amount of time thinking about how to do something occupies more than 40% of my time. Writing code and reading took around 25% of my time. Testing and debugging took 35% of my time.

7.Describe what worked well with this project?

The things that worked well with the project are my validations and small functionalities like changing the text and href for some elements when a user logs in and out of the website.

8.If you could go back in time and do things differently, what would you change?

If I were to go back in time, I would focus more on the functionality before focusing on redesigning the appearance of the interface. I spent more time on the appearance of the interface over the functionality.