CST438 Week 1

What did you expect a course in Software Engineering would cover?
Before starting this course, I had pretty low expectations. I assumed it would mostly focus on basic coding concepts and terminology, similar to what I had already seen in other classes. I did not expect it to go much deeper than that.

After completing Week 1, how has your opinion changed?
After completing Week 1, my opinion has changed a lot. I am honestly very impressed with both the labs and the upcoming modules. My first week in this course has reignited my passion for coding because it already feels much more hands-on and practical than I expected.

One of the things that stood out to me most was Professor David’s lab videos. They helped me better understand the purpose behind what we were doing instead of just following instructions. I especially liked how he demonstrated using Postman’s UI to test API endpoints first. Seeing the requests and responses in Postman made it easier to visualize how the API was working before moving into automated testing.

After that, we connected the same ideas to JUnit tests, which showed how manual testing in Postman can lead into structured, repeatable testing in code. For example, in the lab we created a helper method that sends a registration request, checks that the response is successful, and verifies that a valid customer ID is returned:


private int registerCustomer(String name, String email, String password) {
    
    CustomerDTO cdto = new CustomerDTO(0, name, email, password, null);

    EntityExchangeResult<CustomerDTO> register = client.post().uri("/register")
            .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
            .bodyValue(cdto)
            .exchange()
            .expectStatus().isOk()
            .expectBody(CustomerDTO.class).returnResult();

    int customerId = register.getResponseBody().customerId();
    assertNotEquals(0, customerId);
    return customerId;
}

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