Week 6: CSC318 Reflection

When I was doing my course selection in July of last year I ended up only 4 courses in the winter term. Since I was going into second year, I didn't have many choices for a 3rd year course. I wanted to take CSC309 but I didn't have the prerequisite, so I enrolled in CSC318 as a backup. I read that it didn't have an exam so I thought it would be an easy course, but I didn't really care much about the material. I didn't think it would be very relevant to computer science and it would be like an art course.

Now, in the last week of this course, I can see how wrong I was. This has been one of my favourite courses at UofT so far. The material has been interesting and I had the chance to meet new people and work in a large project that lasted the whole semester. Even though there is a lot of writing, it's a lot less stressful than studying for tests and exams. The marking scheme gives me the feeling of a weekly progression where I'm slowly building up towards my final mark instead of most of it coming from a final exam.

Taking this course also made me realize how important a good user interface is. I looked back at some of my previous side projects and found so many things that could have been improved if I had the knowledge I have now. For current and future side projects, I'll definitely use the concepts we learned in class to make them them better. I might not have the time or resources to do research and get feedback, but knowing how to choose good fonts and use colour in an effective way will make them much more visually attractive.