Through my semester in Software Engineering we learned many skills and applied many new concepts that I was unfamiliar with before. These new lessons I had to learn proved incredibly useful in web application development but many of them are useful and helpful even outside of the field of web application development.
One of the first lessons that can be carried into other fields of programming and even outside of programming are coding standards. While this may sound odd at first when you realize the purpose of coding standards and the goals it is trying to achieve it is very valuable. In the field of Computer Science it is a really useful skill to be able to create something that is understandable by others of varying skill and whether they have been working on what you have. Coding standards teaches you to critically think about not only whether or not it works but how it can be perceived by others and whether or not you can change it to be further used, edited, and worked around by others. This concept is not limited to just programming in society; it is highly valuable to be able to work with others seamlessly. It is important that you are able to produce work that people are not scared of tampering with.
The second large idea that I learned from this semester of Software Engineering is Ethics in Software Engineering. Although this lesson was shorter than the others we worked on, its impact must not be understated. What I mean is that many people tend to turn a blind eye when something they are doing may end up hurting someone in the long run. Whether they choose to turn a blind eye because the pay is good or they are lazy people they tend to believe the ends justifies the means. This is prevalent in the programming industry because many high paying, lucrative jobs are working on things that could violate your privacy, could kill people, and be used in wars. This skill of learning to look within from a different perspective and to think about the consequences your accomplishments could have on others is needed.