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Apprenticeship Patterns Blog – Retreat into Competence

For the last and final blog post in my capstone class, I focused on the apprenticeship pattern of “Retreat into Competence” from chapter two of the book Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The section talked about perhaps how you are overwhelmed or beginning to realize how little you know, or perhaps you have taken on a new challenge and things are not working out so well. However, getting back into something you are good at is a nice way of regaining your composure. I completely agree with this statement, sometimes all we need a just a pullback to launch forward towards the goal. The quote provided at the beginning of the section is what stood out to me the most. It states that “You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been, and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.” This got me thinking very deeply about the past four years of college and my CS Journey. I have no idea what the future hold, but one day I will look back to see where I have been and possibly see a pattern emerge.

The author also mentioned how apprenticeship is a roller-coaster ride, you will experience the thrill of new technologies, but you will also experience struggles as just how little you know compared to the craftsmen and experts you meet along the way. It is important that Sometimes you need to take one step back to take two steps forward. But it is essential to move forwards as quickly as possible because the forward momentum is revealed in your possession of more knowledge and greater skill than you had yesterday. Another important aspect the author mentioned is how to seek support from your mentors, with their support and boost you can be on the right track again and display competence. In this way, you will be more equipped for future challenges. The patterns displayed a lot of insights towards my career and on a personal level. I will certainly be reading more patterns from this book even though this is my last and final blog post for the CS-448 class.

 

From the blog Derin's CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Reading list

The most valuable thing you can get out of any book is a list of other books worth reading. Over time, you will find that certain books keep popping up from the “bibliography”, and you should move those books to the top of the reading list. Other books will sink. Since the reading list is essentially a priority queue, you’ll eventually find that some books sink so far down the queue that you may never read them again.

Start by picking a broad book to give you a general idea of the subject you are aiming for. Then choose a few specific books to master the aspects of the topic that interest you.

Reading the right book at the right time will have a better effect. A lot of reading can improve your reading ability. You will also improve your knowledge of the outside world through reading. For computer science, reading a lot of the latest information will be of great help to your future work and research. Reading will improve your horizon and enrich your spare time.

Even if you read a good book on programming every two months, which is about 35 pages a week, it won’t take long for you to gain a deep understanding of our industry and differentiate yourself from everyone around you. — Steve McConnell, Code Complete

Focusing on the classics also carries a risk: you devote too much energy to them, at the expense of more pragmatic knowledge and information that would improve your everyday skills. Make sure to mix classics with modern, more pragmatic books and articles on your reading list.

In practice, algorithmic problems do not appear at the beginning of a large project. Then, all of a sudden, they appear as subproblems when the programmer doesn’t know how to proceed or when the current program is clearly inappropriate. — Steven S.Skiena, Scenario Analysis of The Algorithm Design Manual

From the blog haorusong by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns Blog – Learn How you Fail

For this week’s blog post, I read the section “Learn How You Fail” from chapter five of the book Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The quote beginning of the section is what stood out to me the most. It says, “Ingenuity is often misunderstood. It is not a matter of superior intelligence but of character. It demands more than anything a willingness to recognize failure, to not paper over the cracks, and to change.” The section talked about how sooner or later you may face failures but the right thing to do is push forward at the boundaries and learn to overlook the mistakes you have faced. In our field, we face many failures but that is not holding us back to accomplish the goals we have set for ourselves. The author mainly talked about becoming conscious of the things that trip you but allow yourself the choice of working to fix the problems that are cutting the losses.

One of the most important things to do when you face failure is to accept it and investment of time and effort to make a small improvement. Allow yourself some time and the “goal is to gain self-knowledge about the patterns, conditions, habits, and behaviors that lead you to failure.” I liked the example the author provided regarding Ade. Ade keeps a set of private wikis listing all his current skill set and limitations, this enables him to pick challenges to push outwards and to stop wasting effort on the wrong things which can lead to failures. This is a great example of something that I need to do for myself. Especially keeping a diary or a blog is helpful as I mentioned in the previous blog post that talked about the “Record What You Learn” apprenticeship pattern. This pattern was very true to me. Leaning from failures is important and you cannot excel at everything but accepting these limitations and learning from the failures or mistakes forces you to acknowledge them and focus on improving them so you do not make the same mistakes again.

From the blog Derin's CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Automation Testing

For the last and final blog for the CS 433 class, I want to focus on an interesting topic that is automation testing. Nowadays, most companies have implemented automated testing environments. It is the best way to increase effectiveness, test coverage, and the execution speed of software testing. Before I get started, what exactly is automation testing? Well, automation testing or Test automation is a software testing technique that performs using various software tools to execute a test case suite. The automation testing software can enter test data into the system and compare expected and actual results with the generated details test reports. There several benefits of using test automation, it is the best way to increase effectiveness and save money. Other factors include manual testing, which is time-consuming, Test automation does not require human intervention and can run automated tests unattended or even overnight, it is reliable in results, improve accuracy, better speed, and lastly, you can test frequently and thoroughly.

Now let us talk about the different types of test cases that use in automation. While researching a few of them once that I found are High-Risk Business test cases, Test cases that are repeatedly executed, Test Cases that are very difficult to perform manually, and finally, Test Cases that are time-consuming. The way automation testing works is using the pyramid strategy which consists of three levels. According to the blog, the base represents unit testing, then the integration/service layer, the next API testing, and finally the GUI test sits at the top of the pyramid. There are many types of automated testing some of which we learned in class, for example, unit testing, black box testing, regression testing, and even data-driven testing. Automated testing is becoming a popular strategy among many companies, I believe that majority of the companies will implement fully on this technology.

https://www.guru99.com/automation-testing.html

https://smartbear.com/learn/automated-testing/what-is-automated-testing/

From the blog Derin's CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Testing with Mockito

During class, we have been doing many testing methods including Junit 5 and for the past two weeks we have been using Mockito, so for today’s blog, I want to focus more on the framework and testing with Mockito. Before we get started let us talk about what is mocking. Mocking is a process of developing the objects that act as the mock or clone of the real objects. In another word, mocking is a technique where mock objects are used instead of real objects. The purpose is to isolate and focus on the code being tested. Mock uses objects such as Fakes, Stubs, and mocks. A fake object has working implementation but takes shortcuts which makes them not suitable for production. Stub object usually does not respond to anything outside that is programmed in for the test. Mocks are objects that are preprogrammed with expectations which form a specification of the call that is called to receive.

Now let us move on to what Mockito is, Mockito is a java based mocking framework that internally uses the Java Reflection API to generate mock objects for a specific interface. Mock objects as I explained previously are used as dummy objects. The main purpose of using the Mockito framework is to simplify the development by using mocking external dependencies and use them in the test code. Few benefits of Mockito include writing beautiful tests with a clean & simple API, it creates mock objects using annotations like for example @Mock, and In Mockito, there is no requirement for writing your mock objects. The first link I have provided gives a lot of detailed examples of Mockito. It has helped me to learn the framework fully. I highly recommend to check it out and follow the example.

https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/Mockito/article.html

https://site.mockito.org/

https://www.javatpoint.com/mockito

From the blog Derin's CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Detailed and basic usage of Mockito

 Mockito is a Mock framework for Java single-testing, but it can also be used with other single-testing frameworks in addition to JUnit. Mockito changes the behavior of a class or object, allowing us to focus more on testing the code logic without the effort of constructing the data.

The basic concept

Mocks can be of two types, Class and Partial，so Mockito is called spy. The behavior of changing methods on mock objects is called Stub.

A Mock process is called a Mock Session, and it records all the Stubbing. It consists of three steps:

+———-+ +——+ +——–+ | Mock/Spy | ===> | Stub | ===> | Verify | +———-+ +——+ +——–+

Class Mock

A Class Mock changes the behavior of a Class so that the object it mocks completely loses its original behavior.

Method returns default values (null, false, 0, etc.) if it is not pegged.

The most basic usage is as follows:

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import static org.mockito.Mockito.*;

// use List.class to creat a mock subject --- mockedList


List mockedList = mock(List.class);



//operation of mockedList


mockedList.add("one");
mockedList.clear();



//validation


verify(mockedList).add("one");
verify(mockedList).clear();

Partial Mock（spy）

If we only want to change the behavior of an instance, we need to use spy:

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List list = new LinkedList();
List spy = spy(list);

// optionally, you can stub out some methods:
when(spy.size()).thenReturn(100);

// using the spy calls *real* methods
spy.add("one");
spy.add("two");

// prints "one" - the first element of a list
System.out.println(spy.get(0));

// size() method was stubbed - 100 is printed
System.out.println(spy.size());

// optionally, you can verify
verify(spy).add("one");
verify(spy).add("two");

As you can see from the code, the main difference between a Spy and a MockSettings is that the MockSettings for a Spy needs to be passed in a SpiedInstance.

The default Answer to a spy is CALLS_REAL_METHODS, which means that if a method is not stub, it performs its real behavior.

The default Answer to a mock is RETURNS_DEFAULTS. Methods that are not stub return a default value.

source：

https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/Mockito/article.html

https://howtodoinjava.com/mockito/junit-mockito-example/

From the blog haorusong by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Use the Source

 When working on an open-source project, please get in the habit of downloading the latest version of the code (preferably from their source control system), so you can review its history and track future developments. Please take a look at the codebase structure and think about why it is organized the way it is. Look at how developers manage their code modules to see if it makes sense and compare them to how they might have used them. Try to refactor the code to understand why its coders made the decisions they did, and think about what the code would look like if you were the one coding it. It will give you a better understanding of the projects; Also, make sure you can build those projects. If you’ve found a better way to do something, you’re ready to contribute code to the project. Inevitably, as you go through the code, you’ll come across decisions you completely disagree with it. Ask yourself if the developers of the project might know something you don’t or vice versa. Consider whether this is a legacy design that needs to be refactored; consider whether making a toy implementation for the relevant feature would help clarify the issue.

You end up with a toolbox filled with all sorts of quirks that you’ve collected from other people’s code. This will hone your ability to solve minor problems more quickly and quickly. You’ll be able to tackle issues that others think are impossible to solve because they don’t have access to your toolbox. Take a look at the Git distributed source control system written by Linus Torvalds or any code written by Daniel J. Bernstein (known as DJB). Programmers like Linus and DJB occasionally use data structures and algorithms that most of us have never even heard of. They’re not magicians — they’ve just spent their time building bigger and better toolboxes than most people. The great thing about open source is that you can look at their toolbox and make their tools. One of the problems in software development is the lack of teachers. But thanks to the proliferation of open-source projects on sites such as SourceForge. Net and GitHub, you can learn from relatively representative code examples from the world’s programmer community.

In ODS, Bill Gates says: “The most subtle test of programming ability is giving the programmer about 30 pages of code and seeing how quickly he can read through it and understand it.” He realized something significant. People who quickly learn directly from the source code will soon become better programmers because their teachers are the lines of code written by every programmer in the world. The best way to learn patterns, idioms, and best practices is to read the open-source. Look at how other people to code. It’s a great way to stay relevant, and it’s free. — Chris Wanstrath at Ruby 2008 [

Pick an open-source project with deep algorithms, such as Subversion, Git, or Mercurial source control system. Browse through the project’s source code and jot down any algorithms, data structures, and design ideas that seem novel to you. Then write a blog post describing the project’s construction and highlighting the new ideas you’ve learned. Can you find a situation in your daily work where the same concept can be applied?

From the blog haorusong by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint 2 Retrospective

 Links to evidence of activity on GitLab.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/generatewcfbreportfrontend

I created a new generate WCFB report frontend which I used the sample frontend example from the professor. I have already had a basic model for the frontend, the one I need to do more is to connect the backend API which can let customers download the report for the inventory.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/23

I designed the API for backend endpoints.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/34

I met with Marcos and Matt and talked about the difference between each group’s FrontEnd design. Also, for the next sprint, we will be having more meetings to help each other out on the API.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/35

I looked for WSU visual standards to use for the frontends.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/61

As a team, we created a Docker_compose file for the Integration of all systems.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/67

I implemented FrontEnd for Reporting with the most recent version

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/55

I am stilling mak OpenAPI.yaml fileReflection on what worked well?

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/71

As a team, we are looking at the new architecture and plan accordingly.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/66

As a team, we are looking over TheasPantryReport.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/20

I am researching Kubernetes with Migena.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/22

We are reviewing Scrum issue boards

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/12
We are reviewing LibreFoodPantry Architecture and technologies used.
https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem/community/-/issues/58
I am creating a simple frontend to test keycloack with Migena.
Reflection on what worked well?

In terms of what worked well, through the first phase of working together, team members are working together more efficiently to complete the project plan than ever before. After a period of teamwork, we have a deeper understanding of our mission goals and become more accustomed to each other’s habits. There will be a relaxed working atmosphere and the chemistry between the groups will encourage each other to move the project forward.

Reflection on what didn’t work well?

As for why it didn’t work out, there was some confusion about the final product as to the future goals of the project. When faced with unknown challenges, we are still a little confused. As we communicated with the professor, we had some clear goals. Because the front end and the back end are related. Taking charge of every task affects productivity. So we have overlapping project leaders working together to get the job done, which improves efficiency. The task was difficult and challenging, but we encouraged each other through the ZOOM meetings after class.

Reflection on what changes could be made to improve as a team?

As a team with cooperation experience, smooth communication, and tacit understanding among team members are the basis and key to improving our team’s cooperation level. We would discuss the project after class and give some constructive suggestions about each other’s tasks. Good communication makes our team have chemistry. Through communication and cooperation, we have a thorough understanding of the team members’ tasks. Each knew the other’s project progress would be conducive to the overall advancement of the project. When a team member encounters a bottleneck in a task, we will appropriately slow down the overall progress and communicate with him to buffer his time to complete and push forward the overall task progress together.

Reflection on what changes could be made to improve as an individual?

As an individual, I need to improve my understanding of the Frontend more quickly to help my team better connect Frontend and backend. I need to arrange my group tasks more reasonably to help promote the whole group project’s completion. Besides, I also need to make clear my work objectives, continue to follow up on the team’s project, and make my part and the whole develop simultaneously. 

From the blog haorusong by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns Blog – Expand Your Bandwidth

For this week’s blog post, I read the section  “Expand your bandwidth” from chapter five of the book Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The main reason this pattern was Interesting was because of a quote that stood to me. It was “[L]earning about what we don’t know is often more important than doing things we already know how to do.” This quote is so accurate. Especially in a technology-driven world, it is always evolving. so, developers must learn new technologies and software’s all the time. It is important to prioritize learning what you do not know. Later in the section author mentioned the overwhelming aspect of learning new information and expanding your ability, it is important to expand your knowledge and experiences in multiple dimensions such as: reading a book, social media, blogs Groups, and other academic resources.

The second half of the pattern talked about how Once you understand how to Expand Your Bandwidth, the next step is to understand when to Expand Your Bandwidth. Developer needs to use the skills you accrued wisely, or you may end up in the state of being become obsessed with gathering and consuming new information, particularly as it becomes easier. This can lead you to  “accelerate your learning, it will slow down your development velocity, and therefore will have diminishing returns if applied for more than a few months.”  I also liked the story that was mentioned after reading Kent Beck’s Extreme programming in which how it inspired the author to expand his bandwidth by attending a local agile software development group and the outcome was getting a new job with the new experiences that was acquired during which changed the career and apprenticeship forever. This pattern has most definitely changed the way I think of learning new skills. I think it is important to expand my bandwidth by taking new opportunities that are out there now. This reminds me of our capstone class, we learned multiple new software’s which did expand our bandwidth and I am thankful that we did get to use much software that is used in the workplace. hopefully, it will also change our careers. 

From the blog Derin's CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint 2 Retrospective

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/reportingsystem

Here is the Link to the repositories that contains everything we worked on Sprint-2. Backend, Frontend, Event system, and Keycloak.

RabbitMQ Docker container:  Created a Docker container for Reporting Team

Learn how to get messages from Queue:  Learned How to send and receive messages using JSON object

Meeting with other Event System Team:  Met with the other teams to discuss the format and schema

Review CSS and HTML:  Reviewed CSS and HTML for the Frontend design.

Work with Backend/Database for MQ: Worked with Database and Backend to figure out the Receive file.

For the Sprint, I worked mostly on the Event System components with the Backend person. We figured out how to properly send and receive messages using the JSON object.

What worked well / did not work well

For the Sprint, I worked mostly on the Event System components with the Backend person. We figured out how to properly send and receive messages using the JSON object. I noticed that working together with the team has improved our work productivity significantly and working together helped us to solve problems as a team. For this Sprint there were still a lot of confusing elements. Especially, we had a hard time understanding how the report worked and what the data was involved in the report. Also, the issue description on Gitlab was not precise enough or was not broken down into steps. We were lost in some aspects and did not know what questions to ask. However, it is almost the end of the semester and everyone is busy with exams and project from other classes

What changes could be made to improve as a team?

As a team, we should be communicating more with each other and the professor whenever there is confusion or questions regarding the materials. Also, breaking down the task into small issues will help the team tackle problems one by one. I think it will be great for our team to talk with the other group for example all the FrontEnd people can meet and talk more about the issues and problems they are facing. The same goes for the backend, this will help improve as a team. We also need to add more info to the cards which solve the issue of any confusion regarding who is doing what task.

 What changes could be made to improve as an Individual?

As an Individual, I should be talking with my team more rather than just doing the issues that are assigned to me. If I am struggling with something, then I should ask my teammate or the professor for help rather than just waiting and trying to figure out myself. Since it towards the end of the semester and since every class, I have a project, I should be planning or a schedule to work on individual tasks rather than doing everything at once.

Overall, this was a great learning experience. I think the second sprint was a success and we got a lot of working parts done for the project. I’m looking forward to seeing what the reporting team will accomplish towards the end of the semester.

From the blog Derin's CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.