A Final Reflection: 700 hours of total development yields 700 units of awesome

Today marks the last day of my work as a full-time developer for the Access Lecture project. I have been working on the project with Lindsey and Abhishek since the beginning of fall quarter, both full- and part-time.

While reflecting on all that we've done and experienced, I came upon a question that I felt needed immediate solving:

How many hours of development does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop develop an awesome iPad application?

The answer? 700.
Now that we know the answer, let's make some Jeopardy questions from it!

The correct answer to each of these questions is: "What is 700 hours?"

1. The time it took us to make significant advances in helping visually impaired students actively participate in math and science courses.
2. A time period during which I learned about, conducted, designed, and analyzed usability tests.
3. How many hours I have spent and will spend traveling to the Richard Tapia, Posters on the Hill, and ASSETS Conferences!
4. How long I have been forced to stare at white™/shiny™/magical™ things.
5. The amount of time in which we managed to learn Objective-C, the iPhone SDK, and the principles of iOS development, as well as apply these technologies in advanced and innovative ways.
   
6. Time which I was fortunate enough to be able to spend forming valuable, long-lasting professional and personal connections.
7. A time frame in which I learned about many different technologies which unexpectedly came up during the development process. These include Quartz-2D, OpenGL ES, remote desktop methodologies, handling online client/server authentication, and many more.

If you answered "700 hours" to any of the following, you are wrong. Your answer must be in the form of a question; thanks for playing.

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In all seriousness, I am extremely thankful and appreciative that I received the opportunity to work on Access Lecture. It has truly been an invaluable experience, and has helped me both grow and expand personally and professionally.

During the course of my research this year, I have been exposed to the following for the first time:

• The general principles, practices, and processes involved in software engineering research.
• The academic research community, both the technical subset and the community as a whole.
• Attending conferences and presenting posters on my research.
  
• The non-technical elements which are necessary to make a large engineering project successful, such as usability and requirement gathering.
• Working closely and long-term within a small development team.
• The challenges which arise from having to unexpectedly and quickly adapt a software project. Such challenges have included:
  
• Completely reworking a feature on short notice
• Quickly and fully learning and implementing various methodologies and technologies
• Using preexisting technologies in innovative ways, and working within uncharted territory.

Needless to say, I am grateful to all parties who were involved in letting me experience all of these things. I would like to extend my utmost thanks and appreciation to:

• Our project adviser (whom I don't know if I should mention by name) - For being extremely supportive and understanding, leading the way throughout the process, and coming up with an idea for a system which I (speaking from first-hand experiences in my secondary education) truly believe can greatly improve academic conditions for visually impaired students.
• The AL Team (Lindsey and Ahbishek) - I don't even know where to begin with this one; there is too much to say! The team was great to work with; we certainly accomplished tasks at a level that we could not have accomplished individually.
  
• CREU (Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates) - For supporting our research and helping us receive the most from the experience.

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That's all for now! There is a very good chance that I will be continuing work on Access Lecture part-time in the fall, and there is still the ASSETS conference in Scotland to look forward to!

- Alex