This week I decided to read a blog post for my blog entry. The blog post I read is titles “Writing Clean Code” by Jason McCreary. Before finding this blog post, I’ve had a general and basic idea about coding and how it should be written, but I haven’t understood in great detail how to properly write clean code. The reason I chose this blog is to learn and be able to use the clean coding techniques on my future projects so it will be easier for other people read.

Clean code is extremely important in becoming a strong software engineer and when working in a team having clean code is a must so your teammates can understand your code. The blog opens up by saying that in more or less all software engineering jobs you will be working with a new code base at one point or another and that inconsistency is a big fundamental problem when working with different code bases. The author ends the blog by saying “In the end, coding is writing” and as a developer our responsibility is to maintain a consistently so it will make our code easy to follow when being looked over.

One major takeaway from this blog that I will apply immediately to my next project is using clearer names. Before reading this blog if I wouldn’t put much effort into naming things in my project but I learned that applying clear names not only improves readability, but boosts the context making the intent of the code easier to read. If I am to use clear names it will help the reader understand more quickly.

My goal is to become a software engineer and in the CS program sometimes it is hard for me to write clean code because I am focusing on other parts of the assignment or don’t have everything labeled to where my audience can understand. This article has given me ways to write clean, effective code in the future and I hope it can do the same for you.

Source: https://dev.to/gonedark/writing-clean-code

From the blog CS@Worcester – Dcanton Blog by dcantonblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Today I read an article on coding-geek.com about HashMaps. I have used HashMaps before in Data Structures as well as Unix systems and have found them to be a very resourceful way to store and retrieve data. Most developers know about HashMaps but don’t completely understand how they work, in todays blog we will be cover HashMaps in JAVA.

HashMaps have an inner class called an Entry Class which holds the key, values and will return a value at the end. Two important main methods in the class are put() and get(). put() associates the specified value with the specified key in the map, it checks if the key given is null or not. If the given key is null, it will be stored in the zero position. The next internal part of the put method is that it fits the values inside of the limits of the array. The get() method is very similar to the put method but instead of storing, it returns a value. Get() gets the hashcode of the main object and finds the location of it in the array. If the right value is discovered, then it returns the value but if it cannot find it then it returns null. Put() and get() are two major internal parts of HashMaps and looking back at some of my old projects with HashMaps I now fully understand what is going on internally when I execute the program. I will use HashMaps more frequently in my projects now and I hope that after reading this you will be able to understand HashMaps better and will be able to give them a shot.

Source: http://coding-geek.com/how-does-a-hashmap-work-in-java/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Dcanton Blog by dcantonblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.