Day Thirty Seven: Final Words on RMH Homebase

I finished the exercises from chapter 7 and 8 in the Software Development textbook and updated the earlier posts to reflect my work. Overall, I was very successful; however, I need a lot more practice with MySQL and databases in general. My work with chapter 7 did not unit test correctly. This is likely because my understanding of both PHP and MySQL is very limited. I am more comfortable with PHP now that I took a couple of online tutorials. A lot of students in my class have somewhat of an advantage because they took Database Concepts as one of their electives. I regret not taking that class as an elective, but it is too late now. 

VirtualBox is an amazing piece of software, but it has given me a lot of difficulty over the course of this semester. I have learned to clone my virtual machines whenever I reach a critical point. For instance, after my second failure during RMH Homebase work, I finally took a hint and set up a clone with a fresh install of Eclipse and RMH Homebase 1.5 and 2.0. If anything ever goes wrong, I can just use the clone instead of reinstalling everything and wasting hours of my time. 

The blogs have been the most useful resource to me in terms of homework and our group project. When I could not get LAMP successfully installed, I found Scott's blog and figured it out. When my group could not compile XBMC from source, we looked at eachother's blog posts and determined the problem. I didn't even know what SimpleTest was before I looked at David's post. The book had helpful examples, but I had better luck getting the information from other students in many cases. I may fall behind at times and forget to update my blog, but it is an invaluable asset to myself and others