For this week, I chose to read ‘Reading List’ from Chapter 6: Construct Your Curriculum. I thought this pattern would be a good last pattern to read about now that the semester is ending. This chapter consisted of mostly patterns that are useful for post undergraduate stuff and things to reinforce in your head moving into your software career. So, for the context of this pattern, after becoming proficient in your first language (another pattern), you begin to look around and see the vast sea of info. I found this relatable as there is so many different languages in software programming and so many different technologies that accompany it as well, there is a lot to learn. However, with that in mind, I think that just makes me wanna learn about a lot of the different languages and technologies since software development is so vast.

For the problem of the pattern, you are unable to keep up with the amount of books you need to read. I thought this was kind of a weird problem, if you reach this problem, you probably aren’t managing your time well and need to readjust your curriculum in my opinion. However, the solution tackles this problem similar to what I was thinking, managing your time better. The solution is to maintain a reading list, this isn’t to only manage the books you read but also to reflect on past reading habits and you can use this info to construct a path on what to read next and what to focus on. I thought this was pretty clever, I wouldn’t have a reading list for that purpose, I would just use it to manage my reading habits. The solution does come with caveats though, it’s difficult to implement this pattern without having a deep understanding of your topic in order to figure out which books to read and the order. Ultimately, I think this pattern relies on having a deep understanding of what you want to learn about and what rabbit holes to go down in order to become more proficient at those topics.

For the action, you obviously create your reading list, however you keep it under source control and up to date. Pretty simple action to do, it’s just finding out where to start and what to read that is the hardest part of this pattern.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Brendan Lai by Brendan Lai and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week, I chose to read the pattern ‘Create Feedback Loops’ from Chapter 5: Perpetual Learning. The name is pretty self explanatory as to what the pattern will be on, finding feedback on your progress. I chose this pattern because chapter 5 had the best info to digest, in my opinion, because I’m at that stage in my software craftsman career that where these patterns are the most relatable to me and will only prove to be more useful to me as time goes on. The context for this pattern is, not being able to tell if you’re unaware of how unskilled you actually are. By being unaware of your skill level, you are worse at assessing your own skills and when you do receive feedback, it’ll come as a surprise to your self assessment instead of a support mechanism to help you improve. I thought the context of this problem was spot on, the Dunning-Kruger effect came into my mind when I read this, sometimes people are too falsely confident of their own skills and clearly haven’t been told their real skill level on a certain subject matter. Ever since I became aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect, I’ve been trying to be more open minded to discussion and debate if I’m wrong on something.

For the problem of this pattern, it says your self assessment is only relative to the abilities you used opt have, you will always lack objectivity. I was not sure what this meant at first and I still don’t, however the next few parts that it describes I can relate to. It describes how being in a above-average team will make you feel like a superstar when in reality you’re more of a back up dancer, and how being on a below-average team will make you feel complacently smug. I can relate to this because in class, the backend team for the guest info system, they are definitely gonna go far in life as software craftsmen, I feel like they know what they’re doing which in turn makes me feel like I should know what I’m doing but, I’m just a back-up dancer.

For the solution of this pattern, you want to create mechanisms to regularly gather more or less objective external data about your performance. You will also want to be able to process the raw data from these mechanisms in order to get useful feedback about yourself. Honestly, the solution for this pattern was kind of confusing at first, I didn’t understand some of the mechanisms described but I’m sure in practice it is better than it is described.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Brendan Lai by Brendan Lai and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week, I chose to read the pattern ‘Practice, Practice, Practice’ from Chapter 5: Perpetual Learning. The name is pretty self explanatory as to what the pattern will be on, practicing. I originally chose this pattern because it’s something that we need to reinforce within ourselves in order to get better at something, for coding especially. This is something I still struggle with due to my lack of drive and motivation but everyday is another day to push myself. Any way, the context of this pattern is wanting to get better at the things you do, to develop concrete skills. Again, just looking at the title gave away the context of this pattern, but that was it.

For the problem of the pattern, it is being unable to learn from your mistakes due to the performance of you daily programming activities, you feel like you’re always on stage. I assume this is in context of a job, but I haven’t experienced this problem yet so knowing about it ahead of time is going to help me down the line. For the solution of this pattern, you want to be able to practice without interruptions and in an environment that makes you comfortable making mistakes. This seems like an easy solution but in practice I’d imagine it’s hard. The solution also mentioned having a mentor to watch you over your practice and provide feedback. This is something I’d be interested in doing but I lack the humility to have a mentor watch me and provide me feedback, I’m always trying to do things on my own. I also dread looking at feedback because I feel I always mess something up, but I believe a pattern in the one of the previous chapters mentioned to put aside your ego, so I’ll have to go look at that one again.

Finally, for the action of the pattern, something I don’t write about often but I thought it would fit here, is to read one of the books that was previously mentioned in this pattern and take an exercise from it or make one yourself. The exercise should ideally be slightly harder than you can easily solve. You’ll then do this over 4 weeks and record your solution every time and over the 4 weeks you should observe how your solutions evolve. I thought this was an interesting take on practicing coding that I’ve never heard about. I usually just one and done exercises but repeating a exercise really cements it into your head so I’d imagine this way is much more beneficial to me.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Brendan Lai by Brendan Lai and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week, I chose to read the pattern ‘Sweep the Floor’ from Chapter 4: Accurate Self Assessment. This chapter is on, as you can read from the name of the chapter, accurate self assessment. I did another pattern from this chapter not too long ago but I think this chapter is easily the most relatable for me at least. For this pattern, the context of it is that you are a new apprentice on a project. I chose this because I could relate this back to when we were first starting our group projects and getting into our teams. It was a foreign experience to me since I hadn’t had an internship yet or anything of the sort. For the problem of the pattern, it revolves around you being unsure of your place on the team and the team is unsure of you. This was relatable to when we first started, we didn’t know each other and our work flows. Luckily, we were doing Scrum so we had a leader basically ease us into things. Additionally, the problem also is wishing to find a means of contributing to the team’s work, earning the team’s trust and growing as a craftsman.

For the solution, it followed the same approach as most of the solutions in this chapter were. Pushing yourself to do tasks in order to grow as a craftsman. With this pattern, the solution was to volunteer for simple, unglamorous tasks. This is ‘sweeping the floor.’ Doing tasks that are mandatory to the program’s success such as maintenance reports, bug fixing, code review, etc. I thought this was interesting because my approach to getting trust from a team is doing the hard work first in order to show I know what I’m doing and to show that I won’t let them down. However, this approach seems more personable than my approach and much simpler, on paper, as well. This solution does come with caveats though, as mentioned in the solution. One problem is you may become the team’s gopher, this means being condemned to doing menial tasks no one else will do. I, for one, don’t think that’s a big problem but I guess it depends on the person and their ambitions. Another problem is that you may find yourself intimidated by doing anything other than sweeping the floor. I can kind of understand where this point of view comes from but for me, I don’t think it would be much of an issue transitioning between hard tasks to relatively simple, menial tasks.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Brendan Lai by Brendan Lai and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s pattern, I decided to read ‘The Long Road’ from Chapter 3: Walking the Long Road. The context of this pattern is that today’s society values quick success and overnight celebrities more than long term goals and success. Due to this, software developers are much different compared to veteran software developers and make the same mistakes they had made when they were inexperienced software developers. The problem of this pattern is that I, the reader, aspire to be a master software craftsman but my aspiration conflicts with what people expect from me, quick success. My guts tell me to take the highest paying job and first promotion I’m given and ignore slowly building up my skills. I thought this was pretty spot on of how society is today. Social media makes it so anyone can become an overnight celebrity which is probably one of the root causes as to why society is this way. Too much do we value quick cash and success, some people even expect it which is weird considering how hard it is to become an overnight celebrity. People need to take a step back and learn to have a long term goal and work towards your success instead of trying to get rich quick.

As for the solution of this pattern, it was basically the same as I wrote above. I should accept that I may be considered weird for thinking long term but I should accept it. I should also keep focusing on my long term goal, which is to become a software craftsman. By following the long term goal of a software craftsman, I’m able to become more skilled at learning, problem solving, and developing strong relationships with my customers. This is a good thing because, as mentioned before, people are too focused on getting rich quick and not focusing on building themselves up. By sticking to this, I won’t get rich quick like some of these people but I will be much more experienced, having built myself up long term and sticking to a goal. This is a long journey I’m not ready for but this will help me much more later in my life.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Brendan Lai by Brendan Lai and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s pattern, I chose ‘Be the Worst’ from Chapter 4. I initially chose it because it caught my eye and I was going in order of chapters with the patterns I chose. I thought it would describe in detail to be the worst of your team but it was actually the opposite. The context is after unleashing your enthusiasm, which I assume was a pattern before this one, you take every opportunity to learn new skills. As a result, you outgrow your team and possibly your entire development organization. This was much different from what I originally thought this would be about, I thought this would be to think yourself as the worst to get better as a software craftsman. It kind of follows that pattern of thinking though, basically surrounding yourself with better developers. This in turn, will motivate you to be a better developer and have room to grow as a developer. I thought this was an interesting point, I mean this is something that I sometimes think about and is actually something I’m experiencing right now. I’m in a team that I feel like are all better developers than me which in turn makes me want to be a better developer because sometimes I feel so lost when in team discussions. This pattern really stuck with me because I related to it a lot. I just need to find the motivation to be a better developer, I need an extra push because just a team of strong developers won’t push me hard enough to find that drive to be better than I was yesterday. The pattern also mentions Breakable Toys and Reflecting as You Work as patterns to go back to because they are particularly important if you are the worst on your team, which I am. I guess I’m gonna check those out after this pattern, maybe even write about them. Honestly though, I feel like this pattern kind of reinforces impostor syndrome, which I found out is pretty common amongst developers and probably is common in STEM related jobs, but at least with this book, it puts out a solution for you to follow.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Brendan Lai by Brendan Lai and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.