Essays

Beyond the Browser: Lessons from ICS314

11 Aug 2025

More Than Just Web Development Before I took ICS314, I had done some web development in high school, only going in-depth in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I didn’t encounter any type of tools back then, so I just thought of...

Software Engineering Reflection ICS314

Reflecting on My Use of AI in ICS 314

11 Aug 2025

I. Introduction Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a common tool in education, particularly in software engineering, where it can assist with coding, debugging, design, and learning new concepts. In ICS 314, I primarily used ChatGPT to improve my workflow and...

AI in Education Software Engineering Reflection ICS314

Blueprints for the Mind: Building Software with Design Patterns

24 Jul 2025

Building Without Blueprints (At First) When I started learning to code, each project felt like assembling IKEA furniture without the instructions. It might look fine from the front, but the back was held together with duct tape and hope. Every...

Design Patterns Software Engineering Technical Reflection

Why I Learned to Love Bootstrap 5

06 Jul 2025

My First Impressions Before this summer, I thought CSS was the only tool I needed to build stylish websites. While that’s technically true, it’s also incredibly time-consuming. When I was first introduced to Bootstrap 5, I was hesitant. It felt...

Bootstrap UI Frameworks Software Engineering

Smart vs. Not So Smart Questions on StackOverflow

13 Jun 2025

Why Asking Smart Matters Eric Raymond’s How to Ask Questions the Smart Way highlights how thoughtful inquiry helps unlock community expertise. On StackOverflow, well-formed questions—complete with clear problems, minimal reproducible code, and research context—attract precise answers. Poorly written ones often...

Communication StackOverflow Software Engineering

Why Software Engineering Keeps Me Climbing

11 Jun 2025

Building Systems That Work (and Don’t Fall Apart) My interest in software engineering comes from the joy of building things that are both logical and creative — a place where systems thinking meets real-world problem solving. I’ve always been drawn...

Software Engineering Career Goals Technical Reflection

My Comeback Tour: Learning TypeScript Through Athletic Software Engineering

06 Jun 2025

From Rusty to Refreshed: TypeScript Through a Veteran Newbie’s Eyes It’s been a while since high school, but I’ve spent enough time wrestling with syntax errors across various languages to know that programming has a learning curve—and a memory curve....

TypeScript Software Engineering WOD Reflection