Zeyad's Learning Journal

 Zeyad Abdelkader Software Design During week 1, I worked on setting up my development environment, using Git, and learning IntelliJ through Lab 00 and Lab 01. Git wasn’t too challenging for me since I completed a 6-month internship as a Software QA Engineering Apprentice at Sony, where I gained experience with version control and basic workflows. Because of that, I felt comfortable cloning repositories, committing changes, and pushing updates, which made this part of the week more of a review. I also spent time learning about unit tests and how they are used to verify that code works correctly. Writing tests was somewhat new to me, but I can see how they are useful for catching bugs early and making code more reliable. Additionally, I started thinking about interfaces, which I understand as a way to define methods that classes must implement. This seems helpful for organizing code and ensuring consistency across different parts of a program. Overall, week 1 was a mix of review a...

 Zeyad Abdelkader Dr. C WK02HW01 (Light) CodingBat String2, Maps, and functional When I was working on the CodingBat problems, I usually started by thinking about the simplest way to solve them. I would read the problem and look at the examples, then try to figure out what the code really needed to do in plain terms. I did not always write out a full plan, but I had a general idea in my head before I started typing. Most of the time, once I began coding, I would hit a point where things clicked and I could clearly see what needed to be done. What worked best for me was keeping the solution simple and building it step by step. If I focused too much on making it complicated, I would get stuck or make mistakes. Jumping straight into coding without thinking at all did not work as well, since I would miss small details and have to go back and fix them. Most problems took me a couple of tries, usually two or three, before everything worked correctly. After doing more of them, I started ...

Zeyad Abdelkader Week 8 Final Journal 02/28/2026 For this assignment, I reviewed the video at https://youtu.be/iS8iI3reEgk and approached it from the perspective of a presentation coach. Overall, I think the team did a strong job covering their topic. The information was organized in a way that made sense, starting with a clear introduction and then building into more detailed explanations. It was easy to follow their main points, and they showed a solid understanding of the material. Their research seemed reliable and relevant, and they supported their ideas well. I do think the presentation could have been even stronger if they had included a few more real-life examples to make the content feel more concrete and relatable. The speakers communicated clearly and at a steady pace, and for the most part, the transitions between team members felt smooth. A little more practice together might have made those transitions even more natural. The video and audio quality were good, and the sli...

 Zeyad Abdelkader 02/24/2026 Part One For our Final Research Video Project, our team had to adjust our plan as we moved forward. At first, we thought meeting once a week would be enough, but we quickly realized we needed more time together to stay organized. So we added extra meetings to make sure everyone understood their responsibilities and stayed on track. That decision really helped us avoid last minute stress. We divided the work by assigning each person a specific section of the presentation. Everyone was responsible for researching their topic and creating their slides. Splitting the work this way made things feel fair and manageable. It also made each of us accountable for completing our part on time. We are planning to meet this Thursday to finish editing the video and make sure everything flows smoothly before submitting it. To communicate, we used group chats and video calls. We also worked on shared documents so everyone could edit and view the materials easily. Ove...

Industry Expert Interview Reflection Report Interviewee: Mustapha Akkari – Software Ops Lead at Rivian Zeyad Abdelkader 02/24/2026 For this assignment, I interviewed Mustapha Akkari, Software Ops Lead at Rivian. I chose to speak with him because I am interested in pursuing a career in software engineering, especially within companies that are building innovative products that have real world impact. Rivian stands out to me because it combines advanced software with electric vehicle technology, and I wanted to understand how software plays a role in such a complex environment. Learning about Mustapha’s journey and responsibilities gave me a clearer picture of what working in this field can look like. Mustapha shared that his career did not follow a perfectly straight path. He started in a traditional software engineering role after completing his computer science degree. In the beginning, his main focus was writing clean code and strengthening his understanding of core computer scienc...

 Zeyad Abdelkader Week 6 Learning Journal CST 349  This week my team met to talk about possible ideas for our capstone project. We shared different suggestions and tried to think of topics that would be realistic and meaningful. Some ideas included creating a mobile app to help students manage their time, building a budgeting tool for young adults, developing a simple chatbot for customer support, and doing a data analysis project about social media trends. We talked about which ideas matched our skills and how much time each project would require. The idea that stood out to me the most was creating a practical app because it would allow us to apply what we have learned in a hands-on way and create something useful. I also liked the data analysis idea because it would help us strengthen our research and presentation skills. The discussion helped us understand each other’s strengths and begin thinking seriously about our final decision. From this week’s activities, I learned i...