Michael Humphrey Spring Week 7

Undoubtedly I have learned more from this class in the past year then I have learned from any other class or life experience. Working with a team of twelve engineers with a common goal is a task that is almost certainly destined for failure, but in the case of this project it was a spectacular experience. Each subteam—two mechanical engineering, one electrical engineering, and one computer science team—was a pleasure to work with. Typically collaborations with this many people are bogged down with red tape and communication mishaps, but we were able to all work together to get work done. Each team was responsible for a specific portion of the project, but made sure that all other teams were on board with any major decisions. Even though we as the CS team didn't care how the physical payload was designed, both ME teams made sure to include us on all decisions that were made. The EE team was especially helpful in making sure we had all the drivers and tools necessary to develop the code for the payload. I can only hope that my future coworkers will be as considerate and helpful as my team members were on this project.

Additionally, I loved working with physical hardware for this project. A lot of times in CS when we work with "hardware," it's really just interfacing with a well-defined API for some connected device. On the contrary, this project required us to write and debug embedded code for a microcontroller. Working with embedded code made me long for the days when I would get unexplained seg faults, and made me realize I was downright spoiled when working with high-level languages like Python. But the satisfaction of watching a device operate from the code I had birthed with my own fingers is unmatched. It's just not the same as seeing the terminal output of an algorithm or getting a message box to pop up from a GUI. Watching the arm operate according to our specification (and only occasionally acting homicidally) is one my favorite moments of this project.

This project has given me a lot of perspective that I had not gotten in any of my classes in my academic career. I have learned a lot from my two CS teammates about what it means to work in a team. I have learned a lot from my ME and EE teammates about what it means to collaborate from different disciplines on a project. I have learned what it takes to interface with outside vendors to get parts. I have learned what it takes to raise funds for a project. I have learned what it takes to meet deadlines and satisfy a client's requirements. I have learned how to write documentation for a project. All of these skills have prepared me to fulfill my potential as an employee in the workforce.