Essays

From Seed to System: Growing an Understanding of Software Engineering

17 Dec 2025

Planting the Seeds Software engineering is a field that combines technical skill with thoughtful planning and collaboration. It involves creating systems that are reliable, maintainable, and adaptable to change. Much like planting a garden, successful software does not grow by...

Agile Project Management Coding Standards Software Engineering Reflection

Embracing AI

16 Dec 2025

I. Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) has quickly become part of everyday learning, especially in technical fields like software engineering. Tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and GitHub Copilot are no longer just experimental; they are now common study aids, debugging partners,...

Artificial intelligence ChatGPT

This Should Take Two Hours, Maybe Four, Possibly Eight: Lessons from Estimating and Tracking Time

14 Dec 2025

Estimating and tracking effort is a core software engineering practice, but it becomes far more complex once real development work begins. Throughout our project, I used GitHub project boards to estimate and record both coding and non-coding effort across multiple...

Effort Estimation Tracking Effort

Cooking with Code

04 Dec 2025

The Recipe Book As someone learning to cook, I’ve discovered that good recipes are the foundation of every great dish. A recipe doesn’t just tell you what to make, it guides you through a reliable method that cooks have tested...

Design Patterns MVC pattern

Using the Force of UI Frameworks

09 Oct 2025

When I first heard about UI frameworks like Bootstrap 5, I was both excited and a little nervous. We were told they could be challenging to learn and get comfortable with. But after spending a week working with Bootstrap, I’ve...

UI Frameworks Bootstrap 5

No Hablo Coding Standards

25 Sep 2025

I look at coding standards like learning a foreign language. Just as grammar and sentence structure help you communicate clearly, coding standards help you to write clear and consistent code. In this analogy, ESLint is my tutor and translator. It...

Coding Standards VSCode ESLint

Fast Food Takes Time

11 Sep 2025

We live in a world that moves quickly, where results are expected almost instantly. From fast food to online shopping, instant gratification is what people want. But it’s the path for getting to that point that interests me. Creating efficiency...

Learning Programming languages Math and Coding Similarities