We are Joe, James, Matt, Lauren, and Ian, 5 senior computing students at the University of South Carolina. We knew we wanted to work together on our senior design project, and as we were talking last spring we knew all we needed was an idea, and we would be off to the races. That's where Ian came in. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his brain, he had the idea to create an app that provides a comprehensive and fun user experience fro anyone looking to explore the countless historical landmarks in the state of South Carolina. The rest of us loved this idea, not onyl because it would allow us to incorporate many interesting software features into our app, including maps, navigation, searching, sorting, and user authentication, but also because South Carolina has a special place in all of our hearts. While only Joe and James are originally from South Carolina, Lauren, Ian, and Matt have found a second home here these past 4 years. Choosing to build this app was the perfect tribute to our time here and would also push us to develop a challenging and exciting full stack application.
We got started on a pleasant Friday morning in September. We met at Cool Beans coffee shop right by campus and had a lively brainstorming session, in which we all sheepishly admitted to having little experience in app development, then seamlessly continued to excitedly plan every detail of our project like the undeterred dreamers we are. By the end of that meeting, we had a vision, some exciting user interface ideas, and our work cut out for us. Throughout the rest of the fall semester, we carefully designed every detail of our app, which cumulated in a proof of concept release, which can be found tagged on our GitHub. At this point, we were confident and ready to finish what we started after some time off for winter break.
Finally, this last semester has been all about finishing what we started. We have come out with the beta release, release candidate 1, and now our completely functional 1.0 release. We have added a full suite of unit and behavioral tests and implemented all planned features and functions. Our app is ready for deployment, just as we seniors are preparing to be deployed into the workforce. We may be reaching the end of this year-long endeavor, but this app, like the state of South Carolina that we love so dearly, will always hold a special place in our hearts.