E3 Preparing for WODs Technical Essay
29 Sep 2020Overview
For week 6, I had to complete Invoice 1, which can be found here: https://dport96.github.io/ITM352/morea/060.expressions-operators/experience-invoice1.html. This is the most recent “Workout of the Day (WOD), where I was tasked to create a sales receipt for a sale for five different products. I chose the UH Manoa Bookstore graduate section to create the table with product names, prices, quantities, extended prices, and the total labels. In essence, I will discuss my journey on this challenging Invoice1 WOD.
Reflection
With Invoice1 WOD, it did take me a while to figure out since I did not know how to format the data. I did try to complete the assignment by myself first but it was very difficult as I took more than 40 minutes attempting to understand. The thing that I stumbled on was remembering the semi-colons, I’m always forgetting to add them at the end, which messes up my format when I check it on my web page. Another thing is adding more pasted items such as putting more than 4 when I only need 5 items. It did take more time to delete and see why my coding looked weird. Lastly, I did not know how to do labels like “// Product Data”, “document.write(), and “${}”. On the other hand, I was able to customize the 5 products to what I wanted and changing the number variables manually (e.g. Product 1 → Product 3). I liked how I chose a simple website with products that I am interested in buying since I will graduate in a couple of years. It was awesome seeing how I create an HTML Invoice Table through VS Code and the satisfaction of completing the WOD. In all, I did not finish the Rx time of under 20 minutes and ended at 22 minutes. I could have finished early if I had more focus on pasting, computing, and applying the concepts. I learned over time that it doesn’t matter how many times I attempt it but as long as I understand why it looks like this.
Image Source: https://www.tckpublishing.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Angry-stick-figure-at-computer.png
Getting Ready
To prepare for the assignment, I reviewed the instructions on the class page. I appreciate it when Professor Port puts how our WOD should look in the end. This enables me to picture what I should be working towards. Next, I usually open the VS Code through my Desktop GitHub app. I always check to see if there is anything that I need to merge and push to the origin. I also set up my timer, format my screen to fit multiple windows, and my screen recorder. Lastly, reviewing my notes and watching the provided screencast after my beginning attempts allow me to better comprehend what I need to do. The more mistakes I made from my practices have helped me learn what I could improve on such as the semi-colon! Overall, my routine has remained the same except for the additional research I had to do on learning how to use “// Compute” and “
Change for the Better
On my next WOD, I hope to start on my projects earlier and ask questions during after class hours. I struggle to finish Invoice 1 since I did not manage my time well and I had a lot of things to research. While it is good to study more in-depth, it means that I have not comprehended the material enough. Therefore, the famous saying “Early is on time. On-time is Late.” means I should improve by starting early. Professor Port did warn the class that coding will take an extensive amount of time and effort so it’s not something that can be procrastinated on. Coding is fun when the end product is completed but it’s more fun if I can achieve the Rx time with fewer mistakes!
Image Source: https://marcin-chwedczuk.github.io/assets/images/memes/mission_accomplished.jpg