With only a few things left to do on the last part of assignment 4, I figure this is a good time to relect on the course. I've gone through COMP268 and COMP308 to get to this point, and I can say that COMP348 was a nice extension of Java knowledge. You definitely need a fair but of Java knowledge to be able to properly understand what's happening, and knowledge of computer networks is pretty much essential as well, but anyone with a good foundation in these areas will have no problems. I had little trouble figuring out the concepts in the material; design and implementation of the code required in the assignments was fairly smooth with only a couple of hangups that were unrelated to the course materials (they had to do with the extended environment, including my operating system and accessing the gmail server). I found the progression of material presentation in the texbook to be logical and easy to digest compared to other computer language texts. Actually writing the code from the text for each example is a great way to learn the more intimate aspects of the language semantics and syntax. I recommend experimenting with altering the examples from the textbook as you learn new concepts; applying new knowledge to examples covered in earlier chapters gives syou a much better understaning of how the language works. The key for me was to not try and reinvent the wheel. Code exists that closely applies to most problems in this course, so using seeking out those examples and modifying them to suit the particular challenge at hand is far better than coding from scratch, in my opinion, because you mkght come across ideas and approaches that might not occur to you naturally. The best appraoch for me was to expand upon knowledge already presented. I think that way as I progress in knowledge and experience, I am better able to conrtibute to the advancement of the language and approaches used in coding. 

In all, this was probably the most enjoyable of all the Java courses I've taken at AU. It can be a little more fruatrating at times if you actually use the code-and-compile approach and it takes a little longer, but it's definitely worth it in my opinion.