CST 373 Week 1 Scrapbook

CST 373 Week 1 Scrapbook

Here is the link for the article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/opinion/work-culture-video-games-crunch.html

Here is a link to the pdf:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxKQpZWb1YideDBkdmJvQnpJb2s

Article Summary

The title of the article for this week's scrapbook is "Video Games are Destroying the People who Make Them". I found this article in the New York Times opinion section. This article goes on in explaining how an undue amount of stress is being put on video game developers which contributes to lower health and pursuing other careers which may not be their passion. It goes on to explain that in order to make deadlines many game development companies will incorporate a crunch in which their developers can work up to 20 hours a day. This takes a huge toll on the employee's health. The author adds, "Brett Douville, a veteran game programmer, said he once worked for so long and for so hard that he found himself temporarily unable to step out of his car". The writer argues that this is unsustainable for the industry as many top programmers leave to other industries for this very reason.

Why it was Chosen

I chose this article because it has a direct correlation to my career of choice and passion. I hope to be able to enter the game industry after graduation, and I have heard of such stress associated with this industry. I hope to find a company that is aware of this issue in the industry and working to alleviate it within their own confines of work.

Ethical Implications

The social values at stake are that because the industry tends to put such a high demand on their employees this can lead to a breakdown in their families. The employees children may be impacted negatively as the stress can follow to the home and lack of care can lead children to act out. I believe that quality of life in the workplace is essential in maintaining quality family values. Happiness is infectious and we should all strive for happy employees to make society better. The ethical implications are that these companies are putting people's health at risk for the ability to put out a product sooner and make a little bit extra profit.

Credibility of Source

 The author of this article is an editor from a well know game industry publication called Kotaku. Being that this publication only deals with the video game industry, I trust the credibility of this article. The fact that the New York Times, a prestigious magazine publication, published this adds to the credibility.

CST 338 Week 8

CST 338 Week 8

Regarding this course, I would say stay consistent with your reading. There is a ton of material to cover in a short amount of time. You cannot get behind in this course. Adhere to your calendar.

I envision using a great majority of the skills I learned in this course. I enjoyed freshening up on Java and building my first Android Apps.

This week I decided to make another app with Android Studio because I enjoyed working with it so much the week before. I decided to make an app that let's a user pick their lottery picks and compare them to a randomly generated lottery. This was a challenge as I had only worked on a simple Android app before.

CST 338 Week 7

CST 338 Week 7

Before this week, I had never created an app before. I hope to use Android studio much more in the future as even if I do not do this for a career, I find this could be a wonderful hobby to have. I found creating my first simple app to be a very enjoyable experience as it can relate to games in how it is a tangible product. I am a big fan of Android and have never owned an iphone so I can see myself sticking with apps for Android.

Obviously with wanting to be a game developer, my first choice would be to work on an application for a game. I think simple games that a player can play for 5 minutes at a time are ideal for phone apps as it is something someone can easily do to engage their mind while doing something trivial such as riding in a plane or waiting in a waiting room. As a business application and working in the bank, I would be interested in the opportunity to work on financial applications for clients of financial firms.

CST 338 Week 6

CST 338 Week 6

The only experience I have with UML diagrams are though my studies here at CSUMB. I am currently not working in the technology industry so there is no use for UML diagrams in my current work.

I have worked with multithreading in Python and Java before. I find patterns to be helpful with practice. When it is the first time working with patterns the task can initially be daunting.

This week we learned about multithreading and patterns in Java. The specific pattern we, worked with was the Model-View-Controller pattern. I personally can't see using this pattern for the industry I would like to enter which is game development. It seems to be too abstract in nature.

CST 338 Week 5

CST 338 Week 5

I think the fact that GUI is learned late in the Java learning process is a good thing. It allows you to focus on the basic theories and concepts regarding programming design. You can then implement these concepts to your GUI design. If you started with a GUI it would be difficult to understand how to truly manipulate it without the basic concepts of object oriented programming. 

Coding the Swing elements in Java can be tedious work. This is why many IDE's have implemented builders to help ease the process. Understanding how to code in Swing is good practice in object oriented programming. 

This week we used our Card, Deck, and Hand classes to construct a GUI of a card game. We made a high card game. I found this to be challenging as it was a lot of information to digest and utilize in such a short period of time. It seems that I have a pattern I need to break for this class and that is working hard at the end and taking a break at the beginning of the week. I am going to make a conscious effort to start my work early moving forward as I am sure the next project will be just as hard.