Capstone Two Completion

22 Feb 2020

We got a lot done today. Finished all of our menus, refactored some database access code to dynamicly fetch all possible categories, wrote some more tests, and completed most of the bonus requirements.

Overall, we spent around 25 hours working on this reservation system project. Nearly every one of those hours was very focused and there weren’t many hiccups. I can easily see a case where a group could work on this project for 40 hours over 4 days and still not get to the bonus requirements. At first glance, it seemed simple but it took a lot more time than I thought it would to get it all done (and done correctly). Luckily, Martha and I worked well together.

Similar to last capstone, we pair programmed for the entire project. The difference here was that Martha thought it would be more beneficial for her learning to navigate. The result is that I typed less than 10 lines of code for the whole project (when I got home tonight and remembered we should be limiting advanced search results to 5 per venue). Because of the pair programming model however, I still feel like I contributed a lot. Martha didn’t just blindly type what I suggested either. Her questioning certain choices and suggesting her own made our work way more efficient than doing it individually. I’m starting to really like pair programming.

Even though the capstone took a lot of time and energy, I had a lot of fun doing it and I feel proud of the code we wrote. :D

Not the Capstone:

And because this blog is not only a tracker on the development of my skills at Tech Elevator but also on the development of my interests, I want to briefly mention something that caught my eye this weekend. AI researcher, Joanna Bryson, made a post on LinkedIn about predujice in AI. I asked for more information and she sent her article We Didn’t Prove Prejudice is True. Machine Learning (because it learns from datasets created by human societies) will make discrimination more invisible and more efficient rather than eliminate it. Besides the capstone, this is something I’ve been chewing on this week.