Essays

From Shortcut to Study Partner: My AI Journey in ICS 314

11 May 2026

I. Introduction Artificial intelligence has certainly become a crucial component of education today. Students have increased resources to pose questions, experimenting with concepts, and obtaining responses beyond the classroom. This holds significance in software engineering since it frequently entails troubleshooting,...

Artifical Intelligence AI in Education Prompt Engineering

Engineering the Process, Not Just the Product

11 May 2026

The Move from Learning to Practicing At the start of the semester I wrote another technical essay called Developing a Successful Software Engineering Experience, I mentioned that software engineering captivated me since it combines problem-solving with the creation of interactive...

Software Engineering Agile Project Management Configuration Management Ethics

Measured Progress: Experience with Issue-Driven Effort Estimation

11 May 2026

Learning to Estimate Before Coding I realized that effort estimation is more than merely predicting the time a code will require; it involves thoroughly considering the entire problem beforehand: which files could be impacted, which sections of the application require...

Software Engineering Issue Driven Project Management Time Tracking

The Recycling Bins Behind the Code

28 Apr 2026

More Than Just a Bin? Recycling bins to most people are like road trips, you only see the final result of a corresponding action which in that case would be successfully travelling from Point A to Point B; in the...

Design Patterns Software Engineering Nextjs React

Final Project Proposal

31 Mar 2026

Project: CycleSense Collaboratively written by: Joshua Au, Tyler Unger, Danil Knight, Riley Herradura, and Julius Lagazo To cap off our ICS 314: Software Engineering I course, our team is working on a final project that is based on this developed...

Software Engineering Nextjs

Borrowing Blueprints: Exposure to UI Frameworks

25 Feb 2026

My First UI Framework: Another “New Language” Feeling Prior to taking a software engineering course this Spring 2026 semester, I had never touched a UI framework. My initial exposure to front-end work was essentially: write HTML, write CSS, refresh the...

HTML CSS Bootstrap 5 UI Frameworks

Coding Standards: Inevitable Red Squiggles

11 Feb 2026

Coding Standards Are Not for “Style” Prior to entering the ‘QA Part 1: Coding standards’ module in my ICS 314: Software Engineering I course, I thought coding standards mainly resided in the area of neat yet petty coding. That is...

Coding Standards ESLint Visual Studio Code

Inquiry in a 'SMART' Manner

27 Jan 2026

Why “SMART” Questions Are Enforced As I get older, I become increasingly exposed to this idea of “asking better formulated questions” which sounds like a social expectation. Regardless, this expectation is really an engineering efficient rule; a prime example is...

Communication Skill Development Stack Overflow

Leveling Up with Types: A Newbie's Pondering

22 Jan 2026

Initial Thoughts on Typescript As a complete beginner to the Typescript coding language, I constantly find myself reconsidering if I truly ever had my first taste of a modern programming experience. At first, I believed in the idea that Typescript...

Software Engineering Skill Development Typescript

Developing a Successful Software Engineering Experience

22 Jan 2026

My Developed Interest in Software Engineering Software engineering piques my interest for the sole reason that it presents itself as the intermediate of problem-solving and creating things that people can interact with. I would be a liar if I did...

Software Engineering Skill Development