Dev Diary – TS5356 – Adv App Dev

No crying

I recently completed a development course for my Master’s program. The course was about creating a website for a fictional company using a combination of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, and JSP. Now normally, I post my course work here on the site as part of a portfolio. I mean after all, that’s one of the reasons I created this site. However, I can demonstrate I can build a website using the normal methods (HTML, CSS, and XHTML). I have other sites I can show case, and well…I just didn’t get proficient enough with JSP or JavaScript to really show anything. That and it being a JSP site, I really can’t host it here.

I’ve been mulling this problem over a little bit when the answer sort of hit me over the head last night. I was listening to podcasts (ThisDevelopersLife) to be exact, when the host mentioned a girl developer out of NY. They were discussing a project she had been fired (topic of the podcast was being fired as a developer) from and mentioned that she blogged. So I motored over to her blog to check it out. Sara J. Chipps, Girl  Developer. Apparently she is quite the advocate for girls in IT, which is cool.

So while I was over on her blog site, I noticed that she had a section called Dev Diary. Essentially, she tossed in a section on her blog dedicated to the project she was working on. Over the course of a year she blogged about how the project was going, what she had to do, and what she needed to accomplish. My only complaint, was there were no code snippets but I can understand why. Not that it matters, she’s a .NET developer.

Anyway, she gave me the idea to do something similar here. So here’s what I’m going to do…I’m going to blog about my project for my upcoming class. Then when the project is over, and I’m going to come back and look over the posts….then critique it, with the 20/20 goggles.

To get this party started….here’s a break down of the project for this course. I have to create a Grade Book application that is database driven that can calculate weighted grades, accept grades and students as entered, and then supply a web report. I think there are some details I’m forgetting, but that’s the jist of it. I have 10 weeks to get this done in Java.

Given that I am still a Java nooblet, I’m a little concerned about this. But hey, if I want to be a developer…I’m going to have to learn to put up or shut up. Over the coming weeks, I hope to blog about the project at least once or twice a week. That’s the goal anyway.