Week Eight - So it begins

So we started actual work on the design and set-up of our final project this week. A little bit of a slow start, but I think we have the general idea of what we need to make, now we just need to figure out how to build them using Meteor and React.

Trying to understand them is somehow taking longer than expected though. I had expected to be able to pick them up faster, given that I have already had experience in one framework (AngularJS). Perhaps it is the fact that both Meteor and React affect the front end, and React in particular seems to eliminate normal HTML files almost entirely - which makes things feel really unfamiliar.

The talks this week were a little different.

For Lawrence Putra's talk (Paypal + suggestions for project monetisation), I felt that while there was value in hearing about Paypal's products and getting feedback, there were very few "aha" or inspirational moments, as compared to the other talks. That said, I felt that the example he gave of SparkAsia was particularly interesting though; allowing free printing of photos but placing advertisements on the back.

For Hugh Anderson's talk, it was somehow really enjoyable even though I was supposed to have learnt these things before. His fun demeanor makes me really wish he taught CS2107 last semester (someone else took it last sem). For the content he covered, I think it's really good to know how passwords are stored -- and that hashes can be guessed and broken quite easily using rainbow tables.