I'm not geek=.=

Last post for last CS316

2011-11-14T04:01:00.001-08:00

Life is short. All of a sudden, another semester has come tothe end and so is this awesome module. Everything is still so fresh and vividas if they just happened yesterday.

At the beginning of this course, I barely expected to gainsome experience of working in a team. However, after the three seeminglyimpossible projects, I learned far more than what I expected.

First of all, I picked up a lot of technical skills such asPHP, JS, SQL, JS, HTML5, Facebook APIs and so on. But this is nothing to be proudof. What’s really valuable is the experience to study most of the knowledge outsidelectures and read a lot of documentation. The main difficulty aboutself-learning is usually not that we cannot find an answer; it is that thereare just too many answers and a lot of them are inappropriate and redundant. Asa result, I had to distinguish those that are more likely to work from a massof search results. I have to say self-learning is one of the most practicalskills I obtain from this module.

Another important lesson I had is difference between ideasand problems. As a computer science student, I know nothing about business. Tomake things worse, business is actually the last thing in the world I’ll beinterested in. I’d like doing something cool and challenging but maybe impracticalrather than something boring but truly solve problems. However, life isdifferent and good ideas usually are not going to success, as Prof. Ben said.This is why our initial proposal for the final project was rejected. We didsome research after the proposal meeting. We talked to some business runnersand tried to sell our idea and only received failure. This was when we woke upfrom our dreams and realized the differences. Although I still have no interestin business, now I look at ideas in a different way: a good idea should solvesome real problems and thus have its real users, not solving problems weimagine.

Of course, I had a lot of precious experience working as ateam member. At first, I have no idea what it is like to work with otherpersons and how to make something that has real users. This is a new continentto me. The happiness of gaining teamwork experience is nothing less than that ofColumbus when he discovered America.

I also had some projects for other modules but they were notas fun as CS3216 projects. I think one of the reasons is in CS3216, we havemore freedom to choose the topic and thus everyone was enthusiastic. Anotherreason is we didn’t have much time for every CS3216 project. Stress sometimesis very helpful. It Keeps me concentrate and productive and doubles thehappiness and satisfaction when I complete a task, no matter how trivial it is.

However, it is really sad and a pity that we are the lastbatch of CS3216. This module is awesome and is definitely one of the ironicmodules of NUS. We probably won’t find it anywhere else across the world.

Happy “suicide”

2011-11-09T07:52:00.000-08:00

Oh yes, we finallyfinished our iPhone version before poster session. Happy work overnight withXiangyun, although it was like suicide as we both only slept no more than 5hours per day for the past week.

This is not an easytask for us. Among four of us, only two have a Mac and thus only two of us canwork on the iPhone app. Meanwhile, we have to make a attractive poster andwrite a high-quality report. At first, Mingzhe was quite against iPhone appbecause of the time limitation. He wanted all of us to focus on the comingposter session. However, after some argument, we decided that two of us work onthe iPhone version and the other design the poster and write a report.

To be honest, I wasnot sure if we could build an iPhone app in six days. But Xiangyun said it wasquite simple and “Yes, we can”. Well, he is crazy and genius. I guess he caneven do it all by himself. But for me, I knew nothing about objective-C, not totalk about Cocoa and how to develop an iOS app. I had to start from scratch(again, like what I did for the Facebook project). However, the good news is, Ifound objective-C is somehow similar to Scheme. The idea of message passing isnothing new. This actually saved me a lot of time. I rushed through two books introducingobject-C in one day and picked up some random stuff about Cocoa and MVC.Fortunately, I got the basic idea of MVC when we previously built the web app.As a result, I spent around 2 days to learn some basic knowledge about hackingan iOS app.

However, as Prof.Ben said, life is complicated. While I thought I was all prepared, I completelylost when we actually started. I was a rookie, so Xiangyun did not give me toomuch work: I only need to work out the navigation controller, which is going tobe the framework of our app. But even for such a “simple” task, I didn’t knowwhere I should start. I searched through books and looked for ideas on theInternet. Well, I did find solutions but the problem is, there are way too manysuggestions and I could not tell which is better. This is one of the lessons Ilearned from CS3216. During the entire module, I relied on Google heavily andrealized that I can always find a lot of seemingly brilliant answers and theproblem is to filter out those useless and incorrect ones. I cannot afford totry every one of them; I must be able to distinguish the right and elegantones. I think nowadays, information is not hard to get. It is filtering out theuseful information that is difficult.

Well, the truth is Iactually tried almost every solution and all of them didn’t work quite well.Later with Xiangyun’s kind “hint”, I finally worked out the navigationcontroller for our app, using the idea of “delegate” (it’s mentioned in one ofthe books he gave me, but I didn’t read that book).

Another thing Iwant to mention is I applied what I learned from CS2020 to solve the travellingproblem. The navigation controller class by default uses a stack to keep trackof all the views that we have travelled (or seen). So every time we tap theback button, it simply pops one view from the top of the stack and every timewe go to the next view, it pushes the new view to the stack. But the constrainthere is, we cannot push the same view to the stack twice. This won’t haveproblem if all the views are organized in a “line”. But things become complicatedwhen the organization of views is actually a graph. For our case, I applied BFSto solve the problem, as I don’t want to hard code how we should travel.

I also realized thatI am the kind of person who learned faster through real examples, rather thanreading blocks of text. When I read, I only briefly go through the text and Ispend more time staring at the sample code and doing some random trials. That’sone of the reason I prefer Google API documents to the Facebook’s. Google providesmore examples, rather than talking abstractly. I guess this is probably due tomy poor reading ability. I just cannot understand without snaps of code.

For the past week,I was highly stressed. I spent days and nights learning and coding. Everyday Ihad a battle with time and energy. However, I found it really fun as I learneda lot and made use of every second. The most important thing is, I was doing whatI wanted to do and I was working with someone that is great, and that made mefeel that I was great, too. :-P

(By the way, thisis not the last blog Prof. Ben asked for.)

Get to know what the user really want

2011-10-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

We met with CVWO staffs this Monday and I felt they were pleased with what we had donewell so far.

We worked out a prototype and showed them during themeeting. This prototype was somewhat near our final product, except it couldn’tconnect to the server by then.

We asked them about our concerns, like in what order theywant to list the related persons. They also told us what else features theywanted to have in this mobile application.

My personal feeling was that they wanted a lot. They wantedto sort by different information, such as block, unit and floor. In addition,they thought the search functionality was necessary. Apart from that, accordingto them, the app should allow the user to see more information about thepersons. However, the problem is that, the mobile screen is so small that it isjust impossible to throw everything on one screen.

As a result, we had to change our UI design completely. Wetried to display as much essential information as possible and providing usefulfunctionalities as well.

Another issue is the off-line mode. Our team cut off thisfeature before the meeting, because Xiangyun said the HTML5 local storage wasnot stable. He had encountered some strange problem during his previousproject. Another reason is usually 3G is now so popular and covers the wholeSingapore. It won’t be a big problem for the Internet. But according to theCVWO staffs, the volunteers (who are going to be our app users) may not submita “checkcall” immediately after visiting a senior. The more likely user mode isthey submit “checkcalls” after one or two days’ visit and they may forget theseniors’ names sometime. Consequently, it would be helpful if the app canremember their last unsent “checkcall”.

Fortunately, we met them early and now we had finishedcoding the off-line mode.

They also raised the demand of native apps. Actually, itseemed they knew little about mobile apps. We spent some time explaining thedifference between a mobile app and an iPhone app.

One problem I realized after the meeting is that our app wasinitially designed for volunteers (befrienders) only. However, somehow the CVWOstaffs took it as a general app, which could be used by staffs, too. Theyrequested to allow staffs to approve checkcalls submitted by volunteers, whichwas a bit difficult to integrate into our app. To be honest, what a staff coulddo is far different from that of a volunteer.

Personally, I feel their workflows and the organization of staffsare far too messy and complicated. I spent a hard time trying to understand howthey work, and I am still a bit confused now.

Anyway, I think it is good to meet with the real users. Weknow the demands better and have a clearer target now. Besides, we will meetwith them again some time later for some final suggestion and users feedback.

Our Unfortunate Final Project

2011-10-09T02:36:00.001-07:00

After the proposal consultation, I realized the differencebetween an engineer and a businessman.

The four of us are all computer science students and knowlittle about market and business, especially we three guys. I know marketing isimportant and we need to have real users using our app. However, to someextent, all of us agreed that if our app is shining and awesome, the users willautomatically be there. However, according to our dear prof., life is not likethat. From my understanding, good ideas often fails not because they are notgood enough or the implementation is not good, but because they don’t solvesome real problem and thus fail to attract enough users.

As a result, we decided to change to build online membershipsystem and conduct a marketing research before we get our hand dirty, after asad, hard and terrible group meeting. Nevertheless,misfortunates never come singly. We went to talk to some business runners andit was completely a failure. Few of them showed interest in our project, not tosay using our app. The major reason, from my point of view, is that most smallbusinesses are satisfied with their current situations and not willing to spendmoney and time on new technology, even it is beneficial.

From the research,we realized a significant hardware issue. Most of the cashiers use some highly specializedmachines, which they are even not able to open a browser. What’s more, some ofthem cannot access the Internet. As a result, these business runners will haveto invest some money to “upgrade” their existing hardware in order to use ourapp. We did think of ways like using some device like iPad or customers’ mobilephones as a terminal. But all of them cost the business runners money and thusare not suitable for small businesses.

However, the goodnews is that we finally settled our final project. The CVWO came and pitchedand we decided to work with them (many thanks to Prof. Ben). We are going tobuild a mobile app, which will help volunteers check attendance. We will alsobuild an iOS version if we have enough time.

Anyway, challengesare there, waiting for us. I will need to start from scratch again, since weare using Sencha and I have no idea what it is (I did backend most of the timefor the previous assignments).

I’m sure I can learna lot again this time. At least, I have had a lesson about marketing and entrepreneurs(although I’m not interested in that area).

Busy “Recessing”

2011-09-26T00:38:00.000-07:00

I guess this blog is a bit late. I should post this duringthe “recess” week. However, for some reason, which I’m sure all of you know, Ihad no time for the passing week to write even one line. I just startedpreparing for my coming mid-term papers. God bless me!

I spent my whole recess week working on the mobile cloudassignment. I stayed up till 3 a.m. or even 5 a.m. sometimes, coding and debugging(and woke up at 10 a.m., J).After this one-week self-torturing, we finally built something: the unofficialIVLE used book market – BooksVenue, yeah!

Again, like when I built the Facebook application, I learnta lot this time from this assignment. I spent half a day figuring out what isAjax and how to use it and another half day on the interesting HTML5 featureslike application cache, local storage and web database.

My part is mostly back end coding. I designed the database(which later was changed a lot), coded the database API. At first, I coded asnormal: write a SQL query string for every single query. Then I suddenly cameinto this idea: since every type of SQL queries like insert, update, delete andselect are almost the same, why not write an abstraction for each type ofquery? So every time we need query database, we just simply pass in thevariables and get some return values we want. I went on coding the abstractionfunction and luckily I managed it. And the good news is, it applies to anytable with arbitrary number of columns, which can be re-usable. However, nowwhen I look back, I feel it seems unnecessary, as it doesn’t actually speed upanything, if not slow down. Anyway, it was a good coding practice for me J.

Apart from database, I also coded Ajax API. I wrote most ofthe Ajax code in the JavaScript libraries. It took me quite a while to figure outhow to pass field with an associative array as the value to the server. Youcan’t simply do something like this:

data: {

array0:[‘CS3216’, ‘Mobile’, ‘Cloud’], // this has no problem

array1: {

type:‘string’,

value: ‘helloworld’

}, //thispart is wrong!!

target:‘Prof Ben’

}

After a lot of reading and research, I realized that I haveto translate the JavaScript JSON array object (which is the array in theexample above, I called it so because it is not a JavaScript standardassociative array) into a JSON string, using JSON.stringify function, meaningthis:

var assc_array = {

type:‘string’,

value: ‘helloworld’

}

assc_array= JSON.stringify(assc_array);

data: {

array0:[‘CS3216’, ‘Mobile’, ‘Cloud’],

array1:assc_array, // Yeah, this works!

target:‘Prof Ben’

}

I think there may be some better to solve the problem, butanyway, this is how I solved it.

After writing and debugging all the API libraries, Icontinued to work on the application cache and offline mode. I did a lot ofreading and searched a lot with Google, Stack Overflow (yes, this is helpfuland the responders there are genius!) and Wikipedia (well, this, in this case,is much useless, only helpful when I wrote for milestones). One of the problemsI encountered is the logic. We had this “post sell a book” feature, which theuser can use to create an entry for his book to sell. Then I take intoconsideration these situations:

1. The user is online and successfully post a book,with valid book information

2. The user is online but send a request withinvalid book information

3. The user suddenly goes offline and want to sendthe request

4. The user just opens our web app, with a requestthat is not sent successfully last time, because of the Internet access

5. The user just opens our web app, with a requestthat is not sent successfully last time, but this time it is because of thevalidness of the book information

For different situations, we considered different response:keeping book information for further modification, remaindering about theunsuccessful post or showing an empty form if appropriate. To be honest, Ishould also consider more situations about other pages like buying book andviewing transactions. However, it was so complicated and my mind burnt outafter figuring out how to post a book L.I gave up at last. 囧rz.

Finally, many thanks to my mobile cloud assignmentteammates! I really enjoyed working with you!

I’d better squeeze some time for my database and operatingsystem papers. By the way, I appreciate it if anyone who took these modulesbefore can give me some advice or even lecture notes, especially for the OS module(I really have no idea what the lecturer is talking about in lecture. I cancode all the labs but can do none of the tutorials L).

Okay, if that's life

2011-09-15T00:26:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that, the more you learn, the less creative you are. If you show a circle to kindergarten kids and show them what is it, they can give you all kinds of answers that you can never expect: sun, moon, the mouth of an angry person and so on. But if you do the same thing to a professor (maybe expect Milton and Ben), probably you can get only two answers: letter o and a circle. It's because we are restricted to what we learned. And we call this "logic".

Milton mentioned break patterns to make people more creative. Personally, I never try this before and am not sure if it really works for me. Even it's useful, I don't think many people will use it and I guess few can keep it up. People are used to the regular way of doing things and it is hard for them to find some way different. Even if they find, they may not dare to do it in public as it is "strange". Even if they dare to do it, they may not want keep it up as the new method usually is not efficient and easy as the old one. Even they keep it up, there is still no guarantee that they can succeed. I guess this is why we have hundreds and thousands of scientists but we only had one Einstein.

Another thing is about the "sandwich" method. Well, it's very interesting. It somehow reminds me how those trainers in circus train the animals. If the dog fails to jump through the hole, the trainer will beat it, and then feed it, and let it do once more. So I guess this is the common inner characteristic of living animals. lol

Apart from marrying the correct person, I guess boring in a "good" family is also important, although the latter is not what you can change. Indeed, family pressure is a big barrier for people to pursue their dreams. For me, I don't think my parents are happy if I spend two or three years building something I dream of, without earning a single cent. I am saying my family is not good. Instead, I love my family. But the reality also wakes us up from dreaming. We do need to earn our own bread, if we were not born in a super rich family. One way is to work hard first, and return to our dreams when we have enough savings. However, the problem is how much is enough. As time goes by, many of us get used to the current life and don't want to take the change, as it's tough and risky. We claim we have no choice, because life is tough.

I remembered during one of the CS1101S lectures, Prof. Ben said that life is all about choices. We make choice to stay unchanged, to live a comfortable life, to give up what we dream of. But you really need to be brave enough to choose the other way.

I don't know if I am brave enough to do the right choice for my future. But I know now I'm doing what I want. I have fun taking CS3216. I am not sure what my CAP will look like after this semester (I didn't spend much time on other modules :-P). But, it's okay, because I learned a lot. Actually, during the past half semester, what I have learned in CS3216 is much more than what I learned from all the other modules combined. I don't regret.

CS1--Only quick and shallow thoughts

2011-09-11T23:58:00.000-07:00

Here are my opinions about the app.

Interface

The interface is not very attractive. It’s too simple andthe developers even don't give a background to their app. Besides, I cannoteven find the icon or name of the app. The icon and name should be placedsomewhere that can be easily seen.

The first page is not functional, either. The first pageshould also show the user the responses to his/her needs so the users can knowin time if someone is willing to help. What’s more, “overview” and“recommendation” buttons should be bigger and catch more attention, whilebadges, profile, stats and invite tags can be smaller. The purpose of the appis to help people get help, so all functionalities that are more closelyrelated to purpose should be placed in conspicuous positions and bigger. Thebadges, profile, stats and invite are used to encourage users. They are not themain functionalities. However, now they are occupying more space than the mainfeatures such as new project, overview and recommendation. In order to letusers help their friends more easily, there should be a button to list allneeds/projects of their friends. Last but not least, when displaying posts,they should be grouped by tag or deadline or other information about theneeds/projects. The users should be able to decide the order of the needs to beshown (by tag, post time or deadline).

Options/freedom when posting

From my point of view, there is no need for location option.This is not closely related to posting a need because the user may also gethelp from others via online chatting. Besides, this information can beretrieved from the user’s profile.

Furthermore, the RSS and SMS are not appropriate options tospread the needs. RSS is too public and personally I think posting a needthrough RSS is some kind of spamming. For SMS, it costs too much as a userusually have more than a hundred friends.

Apart from the above, “Who do you want to ask” section isconfusing. “Post to all friends” and “No, I want to pick & choose reliablepeople!” are conflicting with each other. However, it seems to me that a usercan check these two options at the same time.

Another problem is that the image of a post is notnecessary. From my understanding, the image the user chooses determines thetags of the post. However, the images provided are limited and sometimes noneof the images can describe the post well. I think it’s better to let the userdecide the category of their posts. Of course, the developers should give somesuggestions on tags that are commonly used. But the user should have right to dothe final decision.

Incentives

The stat currently shows statistics about all users.However, users usually do not care much about those strangers. Instead, it’sbetter to show statistics about the friends of the user. Moreover, stats shouldalso give information about what kind of needs are solved by some friend of theuser. By doing so, the user is able to know his/her friends’ abilities and knowwho to ask for help next time. The developers should also give badges when auser gives help to several needs of the same category.

Quick thought on web-based applications

2011-08-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

The Sims Social is an interesting case where it has both success and failure.

Before the Sims Social came into Facebook, the Sims has already earned a great reputation by its PC, PS and Xbox versions. This is one of the important reasons why the Sims Social is so popular among various Facebook games. Instead of paying around 40 USD (for Sims 3), now we can play the game on Facebook for free (if we don't buy any item in the game).

Apart from the cost, many users start playing the Sims Social may only because they love the Sims series. These fans enjoy playing Sims and the Facebook version allows them to play everywhere.

As a result, the Sims Social spreads the Sims series even further, which in turn makes the Sims Social more popular.

However, this kind of virtuous cycle may become vicious cycle if the new version is lame. As mentioned in the presentation, the Sims Social has too many popups and post feeds, which is very annoying. Post feed is one of the special feature of Facebook. Obviously the developers tried to make use of it. But it turns out they abused this feature. Overdone is worse than never done.

Another problem is loading time. According to the presentation, the loading time is really a big problem for the Sims Social. It takes tens of minutes to show the progress bar and another few minutes to return to the game.

From my point of view, one of the major differences between PC games and web-based games is time. Web-based games are supposed to load quickly and be real-time, while traditional PC games take a lot of time to initialize. However, in the Sims Social's case, the developers seemed to forget this special characteristic.

One more bad thing is the interactive between users and developers. A lot of users have posted their comments and bugs they found, but the developers seldom, if any, respond.

However, in spite of these drawbacks, the idea of developing cross-platform game through web browser is remarkable. But the problem is what kind of applications can be developed. As I have mentioned, the major superiority of web-based applications is that we can use them wherever and whenever, with a small amount cost of time and low requirement. So if we want to build a web-based MS Office, we should make it like google docs. We need to realize the difference between web apps and PC software.

Overall, web-based applications are relatively new. They are quite different from traditional application and have their special characteristics.

All of a sudden, another week passed

2011-08-26T02:48:00.000-07:00

Time really flies.

I realized I was not as hard-working for this past week as I was one week before. It seemed I took a break after the mid-submission, and lost passion. I was a bit bored about our app, too. Perseverance is still a big problem to me. I could only force myself to code.

Another issue is regarding the schema. Communication is still a big problem. We still didn't have enough communication even we had spent a lot of time coding together. I recently realized my understanding of the schema was quite different from Minh Tu, who is in charge of schema designing. Frequently changes in our gameplay and schema also contributed to the misunderstanding. I decided to list all data I need to store on server. Then he will match what I need with columns of tables in database and tell me where to store them.

I just finished my new task after mid-submission. Still, I think the workload is not balanced as I had completed my part while others are still working. I should take over some of their tasks, in order to make our app work as soon as possible and hopefully make it nearly perfect by deadline.

Okay, I have to run...for workshop.

Reflection on my FIRST SE project

2011-08-20T23:00:00.000-07:00

I have to say, this Facebook app is my first software engineering project and I do learn a lot from it.

Learn from each other

Yes, first thing I want to mention is to learn from each other. I did learn a lot from my brilliant team mates. One week ago, the only thing I knew about php is that it is related to web design. I didn't know how to code in php, how it works and how to run a php file. I started from scratch. Now, I can't say I'm a php master and can do whatever you ask me to but at least I can give a try. I couldn't have done this without my team mates. I learned from them how to code. Self-learning is really limited and we need to share with others.

Communicate with each other

During our project, we encountered a lot of problems, such as improper data type in database, passing user information from one page to another and so on. We discussed together, tested together, and finally figured out a way to overcome all obstacles. By combining our wisdom, we become overwhelming.

Yet, we were not doing the right things all the way. First of all, we should divide our work more equally. It turned out that I am the first one who finish coding. Then when I tried to help them I didn't know where to start. Second, we always underestimated our time. Third, we did things in a hurry. Actually, we should hurry up but it seemed that we should think a bit deeper into our FB app, so everyone would be 100% sure how our app is going to be. Last but not least, we never did backup. At first everything was fine because we did our work separately. However, when we started integrating, we often overwrote others' programs. Versioning is really a problem for us.

Anyway, this precious experience means a lot to me. We were not perfect, but we tried to be.

Finally, AWS...done...Orz

2011-08-13T06:06:00.000-07:00

OMG...It's so complicated...I spent more than 5 hours to finish everything in AWS guide!

I have to say, with no offends, the pdf file has a lot of "typos", some of which are quite misleading, especially to those who have no access to forum yet(namely me). Orz

Oh yes, I must thank Xiangyun. You helped a lot! I wouldn't have done it without your help!!!!! I hope you can see this, haha.

Besides, today, I met my teammates. Nice to meet you, guys! Hope we can finish our app in time~

I'm so excited now and that's all.

P.S. I know this blog is boring and means nothing to you, well, it means a lot to me. XD

What I want to learn from CS3216

2011-08-12T04:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I assume the title should be the same (as I have just joined in).

I finished CS1101S and CS2020 last year. However, to be honest, I feel I still can do nothing: I still can't write a single software! I need to learn how to apply what I've learned into real life. I want to work in a team (hopefully I won't end up doing assignments alone) and build something that I can be proud of.

That's why I'm here, in CS3216, where I can get the chance to learn what I want and do what I like.

I want to work with others, share our thoughts and efforts, work towards the same goal. We study together, discuss together and at the end, we together make something amazing.

I hope at the end of this course, when I read this blog again, I have no regrets.