Ninth and Tenth Week, Assignment 3 and Final Project

Ninth week's talk was on Privacy/Security + Project Management. I like the first part and I have learnt new ways of SQL injection. My favourite method of SQL injection was to drop tables, so I guess I must be quite kind-hearted. :D (Because if it works, they will know that their website is susceptible to it, and usually, people keep database dumps, so they should be able to recover data.) Okay, I'm just kidding.

There was a lot more security stuff, and it's interesting to hear about all these. The only part that was wrong was the architect/foundation analogy of incorporating the security into the design. (The architect usually plans the design, while the engineer is in charge of the foundation! So it should have been the engineer's fault and not the architect's fault, if the foundation is bad xD) If CS3216 is going to continue, I highly recommend this talk for my juniors. I also really want to kope the slides. :S

The talk about project management was enlightening also. I learnt about more jobs that were related to the IT industry. I learnt that I was a technical writer in my assignment 3! (Writing and presenting information is hard k.) I also really like the idea of lean software development. (無駄なことは要らないよ！) To be honest, I don't practice a strict agile or waterfall style; I just use my intuition mostly on what is important and what is not. 

The talk this week was a bit boring for me, because I haven't taken networks yet. (But next sem, my favourite prof. will be conducting this module! <3 hahahhaa) To be honest, even though CS3216 is for a diverse range of people, the talks are mostly about CS-stuff, which is quite boring if you don't understand it. For this talk, I do understand the fun in configuring things to allow more people to access the application, so it was okay. But for the minor details, I was a bit lost.

Also, had midterm (for complex analysis) today and SSD presentation on Monday. Died completely for midterm today (passing is a very good grade in level 4000 Maths modules, but I doubt I will pass.) SSD presentation was swell; I got along with the archi-people well. Two interesting points: 1) Our presentation flowed pretty well because we actually discussed about the flow of it specifically. We really discussed about the "architecture of our presentation", what should go first and whether it fits etc. At one part, I was a bit scared that it wouldn't flow, but my groupmate made it flow. 2) I have uncannily similar thoughts with one of my group-mates. Like, I can't help but agree with everything he says because I was just thinking of the same thing a second ago. The only difference is that he makes his points more convincing, so I should probably learn from him. ^^

I also celebrated my birthday with Kai last week. It was such a surprise that we had the same birthday. To be honest, it's quite nice to celebrate birthdays together. ^^

We didn't really do well for Assignment 3, but I didn't like some of the comments that the tutors made. The marks are okay though. I don't think the swipe thing was entirely not intuitive. Maybe it is, but it's one of the "once you get it, you get it" kind of thing, and swiping is quite an accepted gesture for mobile apps. The fact that they had to try 20 times was =.= also, because I tested it on a few devices and they all worked perfectly. Maybe it's time for them to upgrade their mobile devices. :)

The rest of the comments are okay, so no worries.

Regarding final project, Yujing and I got into a small argument (would you consider that?) with Jin Guan during the weekend. Yujing and I decided to stay overnight in the lab from Friday to Saturday to do work (I had to be in school to talk to my SSD group mates on Saturday also), but we didn't tell Jin Guan about it. But our work was mostly stuff that's not related to CS3216, (I did my SSD presentation and studied for my midterm), and we wanted a sort of girls' night thing, so we pulled another mutual female friend to study/work along with us. 

We did talk a little about CS3216 and we just decided to use Core Data (instead of just SQLite alone). When Yujing told Jin Guan the decision, Jin Guan got very upset because 1) he was unhappy that we didn't ask him to stay and 2) we did not discuss about using Core Data or SQLite with him. 

We weren't really doing CS3216-related stuff so there's no point in him staying. (Moreover, the lab is closed during the weekends.) Because of the girls' night thing, we did end up talking a lot of sensitive stuff so it would have been inconvenient for him to stay over. The reason why we did not discuss with him on whether to use Core Data or SQLite was because we did not want to stress him out further. Jin Guan is the type to get stressed out very very easily, and the more choices someone has, the more stressed out they might get, because deciding between the choices is sometimes very difficult. Also, he already has a lot to learn, given that he hasn't coded in Objective-C before. Asking him to think about Core Data vs SQLite would just stress him further.

In any case, when I asked him whether Core Data or SQLite is better, he did not really give a response on which is better. =.= To be honest, it's one of the things that should just be done instead of deciding the pros and cons of it. I can understand that Jin Guan feels left out and all, but honestly, I don't think it's that big a decision to warrant the whole group coming together to discuss. It's also one of those things that can't really be discussed because none of us have good points supporting Core Data or SQLite. I mean, if I had good points against Core Data, and if my team decided on using Core Data, I do have the rights to disagree with them, but since there's actually nothing that wrong with using Core Data, I don't see why Jin Guan was being so uncooperative.

Anyway, I got too busy (SSD and complex midterm) over the weekend to bother about the argument. In the end, we decided to use Core Data and Yujing wrote out some Core Data stuff. Jin Guan is continuing with it. I... need to hurry and do more work.

Also, one of my friends asked me about something and I'm really happy about it. Not sure if I have time to commit this semester though. ^^