Author Archives: iharrynguyen

Sprint – 6

This was our last sprint for the semester and surprisingly enough there was a lot of work accomplished during this sprint. In the previous sprint we managed to all get on the same page with our component (functionality/styling), our goal for this sprint was to try to finish the form component and start a new one. We got as far as merging our branch with the master branch and pulling all of the commits from the other groups.

Our component consisted of multiple input fields, a back button, and a newly created submit button that triggered an event calling another component to load on screen. After merging our branch with the master and pulling all of the code in the project we were greeted with many errors; for what reasons we are not too sure. We tackled the conflicting errors one by one, first by removing some imports/adding some dependencies. Secondly we had to comment out all of the other components that were called on in the app.component to focus on ours since we wanted to move forward with creating a later stage of our component.

A more advanced stage of our component was a cross between the tabs component and our form component. We added some code to create multiple tabs while having the same form fields and it successfully worked. Overall this was a very successful sprint.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint – 5

This was one of our most successful sprints yet. We are definitely on the right track to completing this first component and moving forward with our next. Towards the beginning of this sprint some of the issues we encountered were similar to the previous sprint. We had to remove/re-install our angular material dev-kit multiple times to get it working. I recall Matt and I having to delete and reinstall a few times for whatever reason to get it working and to be more organized. To be more organized we created an initial branch called “Questionnaire-Form” but then we ended up trashing that branch to create another called “Q-Form” which became our main branch that we worked on.

The component that we were supposed to build is a simple form. We worked our code around an angular material component taken right off of the angular documentations. Again there was a styling issue with our component. The HTML was working correctly but it was not looking the way it was supposed to. I tried using a different angular built-in material and imported all of the necessities. It worked perfectly. We then figured out that it was an import statement that we were missing somewhere. This fixed the issue and we were able to create the component correctly. We hope to finish this component by the end of next sprint as well as a few more components.

Onto the last sprint!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint – 4

During this sprint there was a lot of confusion on how we should move forward with certain things. In the last sprint we were able to determine which components each team was going to be working with but we have yet to set up our branches on GitHub. We sat down as a class to recreate the whole Git system/directories/branches. We decided to pull fork the original, clone it, and moving forward we would add any changes we make to our code to our forked repo and create an upstream to the original to be able to merge as a class.

There were some problems we encountered; the biggest was not being able to correctly style our component given the angular material code. We hope to be able to solve this issue by the end of the next sprint. Other than this, we had some minor issues when actually running ng serve but we later found out that some of our angular versions were not up to date. A simple update fixed this.

That was pretty much all for this sprint. Our goal for the next sprint is to finish our component!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint-3

In this last sprint my team and I ran into a few complications. We were trying to figure out how to go about creating these components that we are supposed. The class as a whole decided the best route to take was to break the amrs app down even more on GitHub so that each group would have their own component and there would be a ‘master’ branch so in the end we could push and merge everything onto that.

Some difficulties we had to work around included having to know what the layout would utilized because everything was sent over Zeplin but created off another platform (maybe adobe). We definitely are on the right path moving forward for the next sprint.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Find Mentors

I feel as though this apprenticeship pattern will apply to most of us who is nearing their graduation date. Most of us only have classroom experience when it comes to developing and soon we will be part of something bigger than just us. We will be joining an organization that has big ambitions and aspiration to see those goals to the end. What should we expect? How do we learn to work through our problems? How do we learn at all?

The author suggests seeking out someone who has been in this position before and strive to learn from them. Eventually someone will accept you as an apprentice and you would remain under their supervision throughout the apprenticeship while working towards becoming a master craftsman. Now this ‘master craftsman’ who will accept you as their apprentice does not have to physically be available. It could be someone in an online community; anyone in the field that knows more than you do. The way to do this may be to pick a community that is active and learn from the individuals there.

I actually like this pattern because I feel as though all of us need a mentor when we are in the field to help us progress through our development. I hope to apply this to myself and learn as much as possible.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint-2

There was very little productivity during this sprint due to minimal work assigned. To keep busy our team used the time to learn about angular and testing in angular. One method that helped me learn more about angular was to do the Tour-of-heroes tutorial on the site. After doing so I understood why angular was used and what components really were and how they responded and “talked” to each other.

The final day of the sprint, we were given assignments that included creating the GUI of some sort of web application. Our team sat down and decide which interface we wish to move forward with. Before doing so we actually looked into what programs we were going to use and watched some YouTube videos on the instructions.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint -3

In this last sprint my team and I ran into a few complications. We were trying to figure out how to go about creating these components that we are supposed. The class as a whole decided the best route to take was to break the amrs app down even more on GitHub so that each group would have their own component and there would be a ‘master’ branch so in the end we could push and merge everything onto that.

Some difficulties we had to work around included having to know what the layout would utilized because everything was sent over Zeplin but created off another platform (maybe adobe). We definitely are on the right path moving forward for the next sprint.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Retreat into Competence

This apprenticeship pattern seem to be able to fit most of us as we emerge as newly graduates going into the development field for the first time. We have enough basic skill and foundation to get us through problems but there are many things we have yet to uncover. Retreating into competence talks about how you begin to realize how little you actually know and the task you are assigned with may be a bit overwhelming.

The solution provided for this problem is to simply regain your confidence. Know that you have come a long way since day one and that you are capable or finding a solution. This is a problem that everyone will eventually go through; especially those who take on more than they could manage. The author suggests to re implement a concept that you know very well which usually works for me also. It allows me to regain composure and confidence at the same time.

I agree with the solution to this problem because I have already gone through it in my own ways. At the moment I am learning and gaining the skills to become a full stack developer. I am utilizing all my skills I have learned as well as new concepts that seem like a different language to me. Many times I find myself staring blankly at the screen, lost and confused at what I just wrote down or why my methodology isn’t working. Sometimes I even walk away and come back hours later. I find that each time this happens, I am leveling up; I am getting out of my comfort zone to learn new things. I know that this is just the beginning of this journey and it most definitely gives me confidence that I am able to solve the hardest of problems sooner or later.

Stay tuned for the next apprenticeship pattern!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Sprint-1

Getting started with our first sprint, we were tasked with a few familiar tasks which included:

– Creating a GitHub repo for our team so that we could fork the AMPATH/ng2-amrs repositories
– Cloning the repos onto our local computers so we could edit/build the code
– And lastly set up our development environment to be ready so that when we have the back-end server up and running we could start immediately.

The first two tasks were pretty straight forward but when it came to setting up our environment we had many difficulties.
– The first of many difficulties was getting an error that stated we were missing some style.css packages. Since half of our team got this error we dedicated a large part of our time to figuring out what was wrong. James figured out that we had to install the missing packages, specifically ng2-ion-range-slider which got rid of this error. Starting npm was not an issue after this case.
– The second main issue we had to learn to work through were missing environments which I and Gulshan had. I found that since we never ran npm start, we wouldn’t have the environment. This fix took quite some time to figure out also but now most of us are on the same page; waiting for the back-end server to get set up.

There were many steps we tried that failed, some of which ate up a chunk of our time working as a team. We tried deleting and recloning the repos which did not work. We tried installing npm numerous times over and over but the result was the same. I believe most of our successes came from trial and error. We constantly tried updating all of our working environments, researched on stackoverflow, and worked collectively as a team helping one another to figure out our problems. Throughout the week whenever one of us made progress towards ridding one error we would post in our 404 slack channel for others to see; keeping constant communication.

If I were to instruct another individual who wishes to start working on this project I would be sure to have them follow a series of steps as well as solutions to errors that they might encounter. Before beginning anything I would suggest updating all versions of node and npm to the latest. From there, the first command to try and run is to be npm start in the working directory. If there are no errors then localhost:3000 should be all set, else if there are missing packages I suggest installing the ion package that was missing for most of us. We did not encounter any other sort of errors so I don’t know what else could go wrong.

Onto Sprint-2!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The White Belt

The white belt as an apprenticeship pattern is what it sounds like. You are at the beginning of your journey and have a deep understanding of your first language. The problem arises when you are struggling to learn new material and it is harder to piece things together than when you started learning your first programming language. The author relates the solution back to Star Wars quoting Yoda, “You must unlearn what you have learned”. By doing so, this accelerates the learning process because you don’t try to relate things back to your current language but instead connect neurons together when trying to understand the new concepts you are learning.

I agree with the many things the author taught in this apprenticeship pattern. That too is how I learn new tools and technologies on my own but on the other hand, I always try to relate it back to my strongest, most knowledgeable language, and see if there are similar concepts and if there are ways to carry out a task more efficiently.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.