Recently in my Cs-443 class, Software Quality Assurance and Testing, we have been talking about unit testing using stubs. Honestly, I didn’t understand what stubs were during the classes themselves, but a blog called Why Stubs in Unit Testing Improve Integration Testing helped me understand what a stub is, as well as where and when it is used. In this blog written by Miroslaw Zielinski, he states ” Unit testing is more about isolating the function, method, or procedure, otherwise referred to as a unit. This isolation is done by stubbing out dependencies and forcing specific paths of execution. Stubs take the place of the code in the unit that is dependent on code outside the unit.” Stubs allow the person testing the code to test specific paths of execution within the code, allowing them to view different things such as if different parts of the code work and are reliable. I think that Zielinski gives a great example of why these stubs are used in his article. He states, “Once the stub is added, it will be consistently applied to the tested code. A user working on the “allocation failure” test case will have an easy way to install a special callback function into the stub, which will simulate the desired effect: allocation failure or do nothing since by default the stub returns a null pointer, which is expected for the test case.” This helped me understand why stubs are used, and the rest of the article helped me understand when they are used.

After reading more of the article, Zielinski began to explain why stubs are used. Although his explanation confused me a bit, I believe I got the jist of what he was trying to say. I believe that they are being used when you are trying to test lower-level modules while the upper-level modules have not been developed yet. Therefore you can use a stub, which acts like an upper-level module, in order to see how it will be treated. Zielinski also gives examples of when stubs aren’t good to use and what the limitations are “In instances where there’s not an original definition available for a stubbed function, what happens? How does the stub behave without a callback that defines the alternative behavior? The beauty of C/C++test is that it automatically detects this kind of situation. The stub will reconfigure itself during the test harness build time. It won’t call the original definition when no callback is installed and will return a safe default value.” I’m not really sure what he means by this, but I hope to learn more in the future.

Link: https://www.parasoft.com/blog/using-stubs-in-integration-level-testing/#:~:text=Unit%20testing%20is%20more%20about,on%20code%20outside%20the%20unit.

From the blog CS@Worcester – One pixel at a time by gizmo10203 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

During these first few weeks of class, we have been talking about JUnit and how it has features that allow us to test our code. We mainly talked about annotating methods to use as test cases as well as different assertions from Java and third-party libraries in order to help determine if a test was successful. While we kept using it throughout the week in order to help us test our code, I wasn’t exactly sure what JUnit actually was. Luckily when I was doing some research on it, I came across a blog on Parasoft by Nathan Jakubiak which gave a lot of useful information on what unit testing is, what JUnit is, as well as how to set up JUnit testing and to write different tests. I think that Jakubiak gave great descriptions as to what each of them are and what they are used for. Firstly, he stated “Unit testing is a form of white box testing in which test cases are based on internal structure. The tester chooses inputs to exercise particular paths through the code and configures assertions that validate the output. The purpose of unit testing is to examine the individual components or pieces of methods/classes to verify functionality, ensuring the behavior is as expected.” This means that unit testing is a type of testing where test cases are created based on certain parts of the program that you want to test, rather than testing the entire code in one test. For JUnit testing, Jakubiak stated “JUnit is the most popular Java unit testing framework. An open-source framework, it’s used to write and run repeatable automated tests.” Essentially he is just letting us know that it is an open-sourced framework that allows us to run different tests for our code. In his blog he also talks about how to set up JUnit testing which I personally don’t understand, probably because I just started working with it. However later in his blog he talks about all of the different parts of a JUnit test and how to write them. He also gave examples for some of the different parts, such as annotations, which I found to be really helpful in my understanding of the subject. I chose this Jakubiak’s blog because in all of the research I did on the topics of JUnit and Unit Testing, his blog did the best job of explaining them and overall gave me a much better understanding of the topics.

Link: https://www.parasoft.com/blog/junit-tutorial-setting-up-writing-and-running-java-unit-tests/

From the blog CS@Worcester – One pixel at a time by gizmo10203 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

During this last week of class, I have been learning about clean code and how to write it as well as edit my previously written code in order to follow these guidelines. Clean code is exactly what it sounds like. It is code that is easy to read and understand, and isn’t too complicated or formatted poorly. Learning how to write clean code is going to be vital in working in the computer science industry. Everyone in this industry works with another programmer at some point in time, so having clean code will make their life and your life easier. While researching more about how to write clean code, I found a website called freecodecamp that does a great job explaining attributes of clean code while also giving examples. On top of explaining how to do it, it also has a section explaining why you should care about writing clean code. Personally, this really helped me understand why clean code is needed and why it is very important to understand.

The three main aspects of clean code are effectiveness, efficiency, and simplicity. Effectiveness is pretty self-explanatory. It means that the program should be able to solve the problem that it was designed to solve, otherwise it isn’t helpful. Once the program is considered to be effective, we need to also make sure that it is efficient. If a program solves a simple addition problem, but takes 36 hours to run, the program isn’t efficient as there are much faster and more simple solutions. If your program is post effective and efficient, then you also need to make sure that it has simplicity. While most sites will have different qualifications for simplicity, I think freecodecamp has most of them. Freecodecamp wants everyone that is trying to write clean code to ask themselves these questions about the code:

1. “Can you easily understand what the program does at each line?
2. Do functions and variables have names that clearly represent their responsibilities?
3. Is the code indented correctly and spaced with the same format all along the codebase?
4. Is there any documentation available for the code? Are comments used to explain complex parts of the program?
5. How quick can you identify in which part of the codebase are certain features of the program? Can you delete/add new features without the need of modifying many other parts of the code?
6. Does the code follow a modular approach, with different features separated in components?
7. Is code reused when possible?
8. Are the same architecture, design, and implementation decisions followed equally all along the codebase?”

While there are a ton of other ways that you can improve your code, these are the 3 main factors. Without these 3 foundational factors, you wouldn’t be able to write clean code which would make life harder for you and for everyone that reads your code.

Synopsis: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/how-to-write-clean-code/#what-does-it-mean-to-write-clean-code-and-why-should-i-care

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A Scrum Sprint is an event that allows a scrum team to work towards a goal in a time-boxed event that is known as a Sprint. In my class we have been talking a lot about Sprints as well as all of the different roles that each of the team members may be. On top of that, we discussed what each role does and even had a mock Sprint in order to see what they are like. I think that Sprints are really helpful in order to help get work done, and that it works a lot better with less people as long as you trust that they will get their work done successfully. As a computer science major, I feel like I will take place in a Sprint at least one time throughout my career, so I enjoyed having a mock in order to feel what it is like. However, since the mock was only one day, we didn’t get to experience the different roles in a team. But while researching, I came across a website called Atlassian which I think does a really good job at explaining all of the different steps in a Sprint, as well as what each of the roles in a Sprint team does and how they help achieve the Sprint goal.

There are three major roles in a Scrum Team. These roles are developers, the product owner, and the scrum master. In my opinion, developers are the most crucial role in a Scrum Team. Developers are the ones that do the actual work in the Sprint allowing the team to get closer to the Sprint Goal. They do things such as organize, design, test, and deliver the software. Basically, they are the workers that make the develop the software and make sure it does what it is supposed to. One of the other major roles is known as the product owner. The product owner is the member of the Scrum Team that interacts and communicates with the customer. They find out what the customer is looking for in the product and then relays it to the rest of the team, which results is finding out the product goal. According to Atlassian, “Since agile teams are, by design, flexible and responsive, it is the responsibility of the product owner to ensure that they are delivering the most value. The business is represented by the product owner who tells the development what is important to deliver.” This further shows that the product owner needs to be a trustworthy person and good at communicating with others, otherwise the Sprint could fail before it even begins. The final major role in a Scrum Team is known as the scrum master. The scrum master is the glue of the group. This role helps out the other two by helping the product owner define value, while also helping the developers deliver the value that was promised to the customer. The scrum master is like the leader of the group, helping where they can while also making sure that the work gets done on time without error.

Synopsis: https://www.atlassian.com/agile/scrum/roles

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Recently in class I have been learning about a bunch of different types of software licenses and just how important they are to include on my future projects. A software license is essentially a type of legal instrument that controls the use and redistribution of software in order to help protect the author. According to a website called TechTarget, the main use of a software license is “Software licenses typically provide end users with the right to one or more copies of the software without violating copyrights. The license also defines the responsibilities of the parties entering into the license agreement and may impose restrictions on how the software can be used.” Before taking CS-348 I didn’t know much about software licenses and how they worked. I knew there were a couple different types, but I didn’t realize how many types there are actually are and I also didn’t understand how important that they are. Personally, I think TechTarget did a great job explaining the differences between licenses and how they work. While most people think that these licenses are just to protect developers and their code, they are also used in order to protect users. They help the users avoid and protect themselves from infringement claims and also limit their legal liability if something were to happen. Sadly, these software licenses are not free. There isn’t a set price that every license costs, most of them have their own prices which depends on the type of license that it is. Some of these prices include a one time fee, some are a subscription fee, and others include a purchase fee plus a subscription fee. Although these licenses can be expensive, I think that it is worth it in order to help protect yourself and your users.

While there are a bunch of different software licenses, there are two main types that are viewed differently under copyright law. One of the main types of software licenses are free and open source software licenses, otherwise known as FOSS licenses. These types of licenses give the user a lot of freedom, and even allow them to use the source code. FOSS may allow these customers to change the software themselves if the user desires it. The other main type of software license is known as a proprietary license. These licenses are more commonly known as closed source licenses. Closed source licenses are much more strict than FOSS licenses, and don’t give the user much freedom. The users receive operational code, however they are not allowed to freely alter the software that they have been given. On top of that, these users are not allowed to obtain the source code through reverse engineering.

Synopsis: https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/software-license

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A software development methodology is the methods and the different sets of workflow techniques that are used in order to design different I.T. software solutions. As I’ve been learning, there are many different types of these methodologies. According to Synopsys, the four most popular methodologies are Agile development methodology, DevOps deployment methodology, Waterfall development method, and Rapid application development. In my class, I’ve been learning about the Agile development methodology and the Waterfall development method. I think it is really interesting how there are so many different methods in developing software that all lead to the same outcome, and I’m interested in learning more about other methods. I think it will be very helpful to learn these different methodologies as some are more effective in certain situations. Synopsys has really helped me because it shows two of the methods I already know and allows me to get a better understanding of them, but also allows me to learn a couple new methods.

The first methodology that I learned about, the Agile development method, involves repeating all of the steps in short increments. The main reason that this method is used is to help minimize risk when adding new functions to the software. These risks can include bugs, changing requirements, and cost overruns. Like all of the methods, the Agile development method has both pros and cons. Some pros include allowing the software to be released in different iterations, not just one. This helps the developers fix bugs and change things early on in development. Another pro is that it allows users to learn the benefit of the software earlier, rather than waiting for the entire software to be incremented. However, there are also some cons to this methodology. One major con is that new users are often behind and not able to get up to speed, as they don’t have the documentation needed. This is because it relies on real-time communication. Another major con is that Agile development methods may not be as helpful in large organizations as they are used to other methods, such as the waterfall method.

The second method that I learned about is known as the Waterfall method. Unlike the Agile method, the Waterfall method performs each step in order and doesn’t move on to the next step until the previous step is completed. On top of that, each step is only performed once. The Waterfall method consists of different steps, otherwise known as sequential phases, which each have their own goals. These phases are Requirements, Design, Implementation, Verification, Deployment, and Maintenance. This method is also known to many as the traditional method, as many different companies use it. A major pro to using this method is it being easy to understand and manage, as there is only one step with one goal going on at a specific time. This allows less experienced teams and managers to understand and benefit from this method. A major con to this method is that is can be very slow and also very costly. This is because of the way that it is structured, as well as its tight controls. I haven’t learned about the other two methods on Synopsis, the DevOps deployment methodology and the Rapid application development, but I think this website is a great source to learn more about them, and I’m excited to do some more research on these topics.

Synopsis: https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/software-security/top-4-software-development-methodologies.html

From the blog CS@Worcester – One pixel at a time by gizmo10203 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.