15.MyISERN-1.0

Group: MyISERN-1-Red

Here is the link to my group's project homepage: MyISERN-1-Red Homepage

This assignment was quite interesting. I have never really worked in a group on a programming assignment before, so it was a very novel experience for me. What made the assignment difficult was not the programming, but rather getting used to learning and using SVN and Google Projects. Also, at times, I found it difficult to adjust to working with other people. I found that at times I was going about the assignment as if I was working on it by myself. Our group used MSN messenger groups to facilitate communication and to meet, so I would often forget to tell (type) the other people in my group what I was doing. Luckily, whenever I did this, I was never working on the same thing as anyone else in the group. So ultimately, a lesson learned was making sure I vocalize my ideas and thought process to the group as often as possible, so that we can all stay on the same page and do software engineering in a coordinated and efficient manner.

Another difficult aspect was trying to meet in person. Even during the school week, it is somewhat difficult to coordinate everyone's schedule to be able to meet in person. In the real world of software development, this is not really a problem since everyone is working in the same office. However, as University students, we have different class and work schedules so coordinating all of that can be difficult. Luckily, through the use of MSN, we were able to conduct functional (if not rather informal) meetings online. MSN (or any instant messenger) proved to be a rather useful tool because we could use it to bounce ideas off of each other while we were programming. We could also use it to ask each other for help in areas that we were having problems and to check on each other's progress. In one sense, it was kind of like we were programming and working in the same office.

Working with JAXB and XML was a little difficult at first because I have had very little experience with either. However, once I got the basic understanding of JAXB down, I was able to utilize it to work with the example XML files that were provided. The tutorial for JAXB was very useful to gain a basic understanding of it. In the future, if I am working with unfamiliar tools or aspects, I will definitely look for tutorial type documentation.

Here is the link to my group's project homepage: MyISERN-1-Red Homepage