Introduction

INFO 153A/253A: Front End Web Architecture

Kay Ashaolu

Teacher and TA Introductions

Course Goals

  • Demystify “the front end” (whatever that means)
  • Understand how to build interactive user interfaces
  • Respect and understand the challenges of building these user interfaces

Course Layout

  • INFO 153A - Undergraduates
  • INFO 253A - Graduates
  • Both courses have the same lectuer and lab time as well as learn the same material
  • Course work differs for each class 

Course Layout

  • F (lecture) 9:00 am - 11:00 am PDT (in-person)
  • M (lab) 9 am - 10 am PDT (in-person)
  • All lecturers will be recorded for future viewing, but no remote join allowed
  • Lectures: One hr lecture, followed by 1 hr in person project
  • Lab: Time to start lab + answer questions 

Setup Checklist

  • Fill out survey form before Friday's class

  • Find our Bcourses website for syllabus, assignments, and schedule of class

  • Join our Discord Server for communications for the class

  • Send your github username through the form so we can add you to our github organization

  • Set up your coding environment

Course Work

  • Non graded in person assignment

  • 2 major homework assignments building a web application

  • 4 Labs (253A), 6 Labs (153A)

  • Group project (253A), Take home exam (153A)

More on Assignments

  • Assignments must be done individually, but you can ask others for help
  • Assignments are due at 11:59 pm on the day they are assigned to be due
  • Every day it is late after that we will deduct 5 points from the final score
  • If you have any problems, please let us know
  • You will be given a github classroom link to generate your own git repository where you will save your work
  • You will submit your work submitting the link to your repo in BCourses

More on Labs

  • Labs provide opportunity to try out what you learned
  • Labs will be graded on a simplified basis out of 10:
    • Correct: 10/10
    • Not correct, but shows significant effort: 8.5/10
    • Not correct, low to no effort: 7/10
    • No submission: 0/10
  • You will be given a github classroom link to generate your own git repository where you will save your work
  • You will submit your work submitting the link to your repo in BCourses

More on the Group Project

  • INFO 253A only
  • The group project is an opportunity to build a project you come with other students
  • Must be in groups of 4-5. There are no exceptions to this rule
  • We will form teams and ask you to draft up a proposal of what you would like to build, and we will give you feedback. Then you will build your proposal
  • There will be presentations the last day of instruction on the week before RRR week

More on the Take Home Exam

  • INFO 153A only
  • During the last week of instruction
  • Will be similar to an assignment, but meant to be done in 2 hours or less
  • Will have seven days to complete

Grade Breakdown

INFO 253A INFO 153A
Class Participation: 10% Class Participation: 10%
Labs: 20% Labs: 30%
Assignment: 35% Assignment: 35%
Group Project 35% Take Home Exam: 25%

What counts as class participation?

  • Each week a group of students will be "on-call"
  • This means during that time period, when questions are asked those students would be expected to be able to answer
  • May be asked to give a summary of a topic in class
  • Be prepared for class

Readings?

  • After some thought and research, we are moving away from textbook readings in the class
  • In this day, it's a bit rare for software engineers to learn new technologies by reading a book from beginning to end
  • We will use three courses from there for our class prep:

 

Technologies you will use

Languages/Libraries

  • HTML/CSS
  • JavaScript
  • React
  • CSS Framework
  • Ollama (LLM)

 

Tools

  • Git
  • Unix/Terminal
  • Microsoft Visual Code
  • Chrome with React Development Tools

But Don't Worry

  • This is not primarily a programming class
  • Grades are based on the demonstration of understanding the base concepts
  • Grades are not based on extra bells and whistles
  • We are here to help

 

This is still a Graduate Class

  • Perform well without supervision
  • Understand classroom prep materials from a variety of different areas on the web
  • Ask for help proactively
  • Get frameworks working on your own

Responsibilities

Me

  • Explain core concepts
  • Understand design trade-offs
  • Introduce new technologies
  • Tie everything together

 

You

  • Understand lectures and do class prep if assigned
  • Explore new technologies
  • Work independently and in groups

Wait List

  • INFO 253A is set aside for Grad Students: School of Information students have priority until today. After today it is a first come first served basis

  • INFO 153A is set aside for Undergrad students: This comes as a first come first served basis

  • The waitlist order for both classes will be honored after today

 

Wait List

  • Apologies, but there will be no auditing this class this year

  • Course materials will be publicly available if you ultimately are not able to enroll into the class

Questions?

So what is this class really about?

  • Good Question
  • With the exception of mobile native applications, we now primarily interact with the internet using user interfaces powered by web technologies
  • Even some mobile applications themselves are powered by web technologies

Focus on the browser

  • We will be focusing on how to make your web browser an interactive internet powered canvas
  • In the process, we will go through the philosophies of the internet, of web development, and the why things are the way they are
  • By understanding not just the how, but the why, you'll be able to better be prepared for future trends, and better build and understand current systems

Focus on personal development

  • Even though we will be focusing a lot on building software, this is not a bootcamp course
  • You will all come away with different skills and takeaways from this material
  • Let's go through some scenarios

Backend/Data Engineer

  • This class will enable you to see how the services that you build are consumed for user delight
  • You can appreciate some of the tradeoffs front end engineers have to make to use your services
  • You'll see how your skills translate (or not) to user interface engineering

UI Designer

  • This class will enable you to see how the designs that you build are translated into code that brings it to life
  • You may also start to notice how designs are broken down into individual reusable components, and perhaps how you can use that understanding in your future designs

UX Designer

  • This class will enable you to see how the user interactions you build your widgets on are actualized
  • The technical tradeoffs that exist when building UI widgets can inform your future designs in what may (or may not) be possible from an engineering perspective

Computer Scientist

  • This class will enable you to use your programming skills to build actual UI's that can be used by real users
  • You will see how some of the the data structures and coding constructs (e.g. functional programming) that you learn from classes are inherent in building user interfaces

Product Manager / Business Leader

  • This class will enable you to experience first hand what it takes to build a user interface from scratch
  • This class also can give you a sense on how long new features take to build
  • This class can provide understanding on what programmers on your team go through on a daily basis, giving insight on how to better direct the future of your product

Data Scientist

  • This class will take you away from writing code to analyze data to writing code to build products based on the data that you have analyzed
  • This course could also give insights on how to build better visualizations of the data that you may have not have considered before

ML Engineer

  • This class will enable you to build front ends that connect the user to the models that you train and release to the world
  • This class will help you be able to connect with full stack engineers and better understand their considerations and needs and can incorporate those concepts to your model/pipelines

Questions?