UAGC Blog

The technological topic I have selected is programming language. Although I have worked with programming languages in the past, I feel there is always something to learn regarding the hundreds of languages available nowadays. Specifically, I wish to learn more about what differentiates the many languages we have today. I have some high-level ideas about the differences between some of the modern languages, such as how Java is typically used for platform independence, Python is generally used in machine learning and scripting, JavaScript is usually used for web development (specifically the backend, although it has many frontend frameworks), and so on, but that is only a part of the whole picture. Researching more on programming languages, such as why they were made, what they are used for now, and why the languages are used for what they are used for, can help me better grasp general programming concepts. As we have learned in class, programming languages have evolved from their roots...

Security is a substantial portion of any IT department's concerns. If a hacker manages to sneak in and encrypt your data, they can essentially lock you out of your own data and make you pay to get it back. Being a target of a ransomware attack can be costly, not only monetarily but also in terms of reputation. However, ransomware is only one of many tools available to modern hackers. Simply misconfiguring your network can leave you vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks, such as ping of death, where the attacker sends a ping packet larger than the maximum allowable size, crashing the target server or machine. Sometimes, hackers can use multiple computers to launch what is known as distributed denial-of-service (Vahid et al., 2015/2019). Although DDoS attacks are less successful now than they used to be, one can be frustrated if they try to visit a website to purchase a product and the request constantly times out; the customer will likely migrate to another company to buy their pr...

Currently, I work in the insurance industry. Insurance has existed in some form or capacity long before the computer was economically viable to be at every employee's desk. Early years of insurance relied on pen, pencil, paper, stamps, envelopes, and everything else manual. At my current company, we still sometimes use paper (for billing, notes, and writing down phone numbers). Still, we have generally adopted using computers to perform the day-to-day tasks required of an insurance agency. Instead of having a handwritten spreadsheet to reference the price for a new customer policy, agents now plug in all of the necessary information into our policy management system and let it determine the policy price automatically. Is Computer Literacy Important? Being able to enter the data correctly is imperative to ensure that our system operates as intended. Despite the safeguards in place, there have been times when agents have filled out forms incorrectly, which has caused issues downs...

This week's assignment was very illuminating. The intricacies of how packets travel through the internet are not lost on me. At a high level, packets are forwarded from router to router as they inch closer and closer to their ending destination. The results from pinging or tracing the route show that the further a location is physically from the initial location, the longer the packet takes to reach its final destination. However, there are significant differences between the results of pinging the Japanese Yahoo and the Australian websites; the physical distance to Japan is almost 3,000 miles closer than Australia, but the average time to Japan is 253.145ms, whereas it was only 95.284ms to reach Australia. The difference in travel time could result from having two additional hops, heavier traffic, or router issues that could be slowing the travel time. But, in general, packet travel is still limited by physics; even a direct fiber optic connection between me and my destination is ...

In an office environment, there have been many wants and needs to boost productivity over the years. In the early days, physical inventions such as staplers and typewriters were some of the most significant ways to increase throughput by helping with writing and organization. With the advent of the modern personal computer, we often see more virtual inventions, such as applications designed to help improve the productivity of the office. Although there are alternatives, the Microsoft 365 suite provides three huge tools to help catalyze productivity: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Each application has its specific intended uses and offers numerous benefits over the less electronic or manual versions of performing those tasks. Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a staple word-processing application in office environments. Word was invented in the 1980s as Microsoft attempted to enter the word-processing market (Dziak, 2023c). The application's intended use cases often revolve around c...

The last time I had to travel for work, I was required to travel from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to Orlando International Airport for a conference. Typically, I have to fly to Erie International Airport in Erie, PA, which limits my available flight selection to American Airlines, as that is the only airline that flies into or out of Erie International. In the case of flying to Orlando, options were much more available, and I ended up flying Spirit Airlines (primarily due to company policy requiring me to use, at maximum, $200 more than the cheapest flight, which resulted in either Spirit or Frontier as they are so much more affordable than any other airline). To fly with Spirit and keep track of my flight, baggage, and boarding pass, I downloaded the Spirit Airlines Android app. Maybe it is my incompetence with using their app or my circumstances on how I would like to use the app that significantly differs from the general use cases of others, but I found the app somewhat...

With computers becoming an increasingly necessary tool across all industries, the question of how to best utilize this tool is constantly asked. Many users are content with using premade programs and apps written by large software vendors; others delve into computer programming to solve specific issues in their businesses and lives. With the advent of modern programming languages, long gone are the days of meticulously sorting punch cards, punched manually with the intent to feed them into a card reader to hope and pray your syntax is correct and you receive the correct answers to your inputs. Nowadays, we can write in near-complete English sentences to manipulate the computer into performing a task. Although programming has shifted in flavor and ease of use, its core fundamentals are still the same across almost all programming languages. Using the Scratch Programming Language Scratch Logo (Obtained from  CleanPNG ) One of the most simple-to-use programming languages developed b...

My name is David Mills, and I am enrolled at UAGC to graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology. I live in Fort Worth, Texas, with my lovely wife, Evan, and our Rat Terrier / Chihuahua mix, Gizmo. I am a remote IT administrator specializing in the z/OS operating system on the IBM mainframe. I have worked on the mainframe side of IT for around five years now and have a much more limited understanding of middleware/database/open systems administration. I have written many programs in college before, ranging from Java, Python, assembly, and C/C++. My favorite language to write in was C# before transitioning to mainframe. Now that I work on the z/OS side of things, I primarily use REXX and Unix shell scripts for all of my programming needs (with the help of JCL, which isn't technically a "programming language" but does have some basic IF/THEN structures and such). I have a basic understanding of COBOL and HLASM (assembler on the mainframe) but have yet to w...