There are many exercises that I did in CS, but by far the most satisfying to create was the stars program. This program draws 10 random starts with random sizes in random locations. It took a little while for me to figure out, but when I finally did, it was great feeling of accomplishment.
This program takes in an integer input. Then it finds all the prime numbers between 0 and in input value. I really like the organization in the formatting of the output, and this was another program that was enjoyable to write.
The goal of Apps for Good is to create an app that solves a problem with the help of technology. My group decided that we wanted to create an app that helps people experiencing homelessness because one of my group members, Shri, had previous experience working at a shelter and we thought it was a good cause.
During our research process we found that in 2019, there were 20,000 people experiencing homelessness in Massachusetts. However, these people have difficulties with finding available shelters near them. Through our app, my group aspired to help those experiencing homeless by locating available shelters near them. We also added information about food pantries where they can get food.
From our research, we decided that for our minimum viable product we wanted to show the location of pantries and shelter, along with their basic information. We also wanted to show the vacancies of shelters to bridge the communication gap between shelters and people experiencing homelessness. Later, we added filters that would search by distance from the user, name, and vacancy for shelters.
All the information about the shelters and pantries were stored in a database and pulled when the user needs to see the information. The information could also be updated by pantries in shelter from an editing page which would then be stored in the database. We tested the filters using our location and across different devices.
Here is a video about the app and how it works.