Closer to My App

This week was super eventful. Like I said in my previous blog, I was unable to contact my on-site adviser for the internship. However, I did have a conversation with my school adviser and she told me to right now focus on learning Swift and android app development.

Before I started my internship I was taking this Stanford course on iTunes U to learn Swift (the new programming language used to make iPhone/iOS apps). I had to stop the course because I needed to focus on the hardware part of training. I needed to understand the hardware so that I could understand how information travels within the application layers that make up the Internet. This was a crucial aspect to understand so that I could better grasp the concept of cybersecurity and where the Internet is the most vulnerable to hacking.

However, now that I have completed the Computer Networks book A. Tanenbaum assigned to me, I am free to continue my training with the Swift learning Stanford course on iTunes U. My school adviser also gave me a great book to read to learn how to make apps on android using Java programming. The reason that I needed to learn how to make apps on android and iOS is so that when I finally get in contact with my on-site mentor she can tell me what device I will make apps on. I already know Java from my AP Computer Science class so it will not be as much work to learn app development on android as it would be for iOS.

Futhermore, this week has been me finishing up the Computer Network book by Forouzan. This book is just reference material for the previously mentioned book and it summarizes all I need to understand (for now at least) about cybersecurity. Encryption and decryption algorithms are called ciphers. A key is a number (or set of numbers) that the cipher operates on.

This is an example of a key needed in a type of a traditional cipher that we use today to protect information on the Internet.

Using the key (previous picture) we can encrypt and decrypt code.

Furthermore in the Stanford Course, I am slowly working on making a calculator app as I try to understand the Swift programming language. I have to say that I truly enjoying my experience with app development.