After one week of ENG 298, I think the course is off to a great start. I think that Scholar is a great tool to communicate with other class members, as opposed to Moodle or Compass because using the tool to communicate feels more like a conversation rather than individual posts.

There is a debate within Computer Science regarding whether CS students and professionals should be allowed to call themselves engineers. People argue that other engineers (civil, mechanical) are held to a higher moral standard as they have to take every detail into account since their products (bridges, machines, buildings) must be "perfect." Computer Scientists often get away with writing buggy code and thus aren't held to the same moral standards.

Sometimes, I do feel as if my contributions do not have much of an impact on the global population as opposed to the contributions of other engineers; some argue that Computer Scientists solve "first-world problems." Silicon Valley companies, for example, are attempting to make it easier to find parking and buy houses. Furthermore, since the reach of technology is confined to primarily the Western world and certain developed Eastern countries, it is difficult for software to pave its way to the other side of the planet.  Although there are countless counterexamples of this argument, such as Khan Academy, I hope that through this course, I learn about more ways I can make a global impact as a Computer Scientist.