What I have learnt in CS3216

I believe that this sem will be the most impressing sem I will have in NUS.

Not only because I have learnt so much, but also because I have made so many friends with the most brilliant guys in NUS with who I can share the same interests. Without them, I definitely can not survive in this sem. They gave me technical support and taught me how to be a software engineer. Before this module, I totally have no idea about how to develop a web app or a website. I learnt from zero. Fortunately, all my teammates gave me a lot of help during my learning.

Prof Ben has been my faverate prof in NUS. I like his philosophy, I like his "修身，齐家，治国，平天下。" Actually, that's my way of living. Now I'm still at the first stage: "修身". I really hope in the future, I still get chances to study from Prof Ben.

Thank you all the people in CS3216.

The most basic thing I have leart in CS3216 is programming skills. I have never done a web app or website before. I have never used languages like PHP, HTML, CSS, AJAX and so on. I learnt from how the data is transmitted between browser and server, and how the browser and server translate and display it. Then I have to learn how to write a program to do what we want. The knowledge itself is not so hard. what is hard is that you must learn it in a very short time and use it immediately without much practice. No textbook, no tutorial. Google is your best friend. :]

Now I want to talk the most meaningful I have learnt in this module. It's thinking. Think of a good idea and realise it. I had never thought about to do some facebook-like things in the past. I like reading IT news, analyse what is going on, and how the big company like Google and Apple is changing the world. But I felt all these things were far away from me.Except follow them closely, I could do nothing. However, in this module, my feeling changed. I feel that if I really think hard and hard work, I really can do some meaningful things, and change something.

I like our final project. Althought finally, we only show a website "Weiguan net". But the whole progress of it is more meaningful for us.

At first, we want to do a Iphone game. We designed a big game. We wanted to syncretize some original and interesting small games into a huge cultivating game, using little P2P. When we were doing one small game called "finger breaker", we found it is more interesting and there was no such game before. sSo we decided to focus it and make it complete. We designed many stages and rules for it. Everything went well and we were full of passion. The turning point is the meeting with Prof Ben. Prof Ben gave us a lot of good advices but also made us to doubt whether "finger breaker" is really a good game. We wavered. We decided to do a SNS website. Weiguan net is our idea. Weiguan(围观) is a very popular idea in China now. Many university students are interested at Weiguan. We want to make Weiguan net a SNS website which is events-centered, different from the existing SNS websites (i.e Facebook, twitter). And we wanted our users not only to record the evernt, or comments the events after the events, but also to predict before the events and broadcast during the evetns. While doing the website, we found it's to big for us, and no important point to popularize. Again, we decided to focus on small point which we think more important and interesting. So we focus on broadcasting, which we finally show in the final show and talk.

I like our idea. After so much, I got 3 points. Firstly, as developer, we can't imagine what the users will do. We must do a lot a lot of research to find out what the users will do. Secondly, start from a small point, don't try to do something big at the very beginning. Thirdly, Do marketing. It's means little if we only do something for fun. Lack of experience makes us in chaos all the time. That's what we will continue to learn and do after CS3216.

I feel very pity giving up our Iphone game. It's an original and interesting game(at least I think so, no matter what others say). We will continue to do it in the vocation.

CS3216 never ends. It's just a beginning. Thank you.