Chapter 15 discusses the benefits on writing quality code as opposed to average code. He describes that quality code is expensive and average code being cheap. As a project manager, you want to produce quality products. This entails quality code, but as the author described quality code is expensive. It takes time to write it nice, clean and in an efficient way. As a software craftsman, one must hone in their skills to write quality code that is cheap.

Chapter 16 talks about the definition on being a software craftsman and what to do in order to be successful. In order to be successful with anything, one must have passion in what they are doing. For example, take a look at all of the great athletes in the world. No matter what sport, they all share a similarity. It’s passion for that sport, and that’s what makes them successful. It’s the same for being a software craftsman. You must constantly be learning and keeping up to date with the latest trends in technology in order to stay in the loop.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Chapter 13 talks about the learning culture and it states that Jr. Developers are lead to have this notion about becoming a manager is the outcome of all of their hard work. Lets say a Jr. Front End Developer has a passion for building front end applications. He/she could become a manager in the long run, but if there is a true passion for it, another career goal is to turn that Jr. Title into a Senior title.

Chapter 14 was a little interesting. It talks about the different types of developers that you might encounter. As we all know, there are a ton of ways to get a job done in programming and everyone has their own way of doing something. A person might see that this is the only way to do something, but your way is more efficient, you must walk them through your code so they can see why your way or your thinking would be the better option in this situation.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Here it is, the last and final sprint of the semester and man, did it fly by. Our issue was rather tricky, because we spent the majority of the time trying to track where the files were only to find out that there was nothing that we could do ourselves to change it. After  asking for help, the nice people of the OpenMRS community reached out to us and told us that they would have to reach out to another party in order for this issue to be fixed. All in all, this issue was out of our hands and there was nothing we could do about it, but to inform the original developers. Next week we have a presentation and I’m very excited to talk about Team Loadings experience with this assignment.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This blog post will revolve around chapters 9 and 10.

Chapter 9 discusses on the topic about how to recruit the best developers. The author goes on and talk about the flaws that he sees with the recruitment process and gives us solutions on how we can better this process.

One of the main flaw with recruitment is that companies use keywords in order to select their candidates. Keywords on a resume has become the cream on the crop when it comes to the tech world. It doesn’t matter if you have 1000 years of experience in a certain programming language, but more important if you have a million of those keywords that these screen readers pick up.

How does a recruiter know how passionate a developer is? It’s simple, you can ask a developer if he knows any of the latest technologies and trends, a github to display code and or projects that he or she is involved in.

Chapter 10 talks on the interview process of a software developer. There will always be problems and you as a interviewee candidate must display your best knowledge in order to solve and impress the recruiters.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Another sprint in the books, and this time, as a team, we all worked on one issue together. During this sprint, the main difficulty was finding the file that the issue was in. It took us a couple of days using many tactics to find the file. A teammate decided to go on Github to track down the problem by scouring through similar problems. We finally found the problem, but it was very outdated, and the file structure to find that file was no longer the same, but we had an idea of where to look in the current file directory. After hurdling this obstacle, we were faced with even more obstacles. The next obstacle consisted of finding out that the file our issue was in was not in the original OpenMRS source code. It was in the NPM install files that they tell us to run through the terminal. I believe that in order to hurdle this obstacle, we must contact the developers to see what they think.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This blog post will revolve around chapters 7 and 8

Chapter 7 talks about how beneficial technical practices are and ways to convince your peers to adopt the same practices. There were many repetitive things being stated in this chapter that I’ve already learned before. One of them is the idea of the “boy scout rule”, which is to always leave the campground cleaner than you find it.

Chapter 8 discusses on the steps to build a career and what motivates us. There was a story in this chapter about the author having a dream on becoming a software engineer. He had many obstacles in his way, lack of english, average skills, but that did not steer him away from his dream. He worked and worked to master his craft and 10 year later, what was a dream turned into a reality. He was hired as a software engineer in the United Kingdom. This just goes to show that if you want something badly, then you have to go and get it no matter how many obstacles there are in front of you.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This blog post will revolve around chapters 5 & 6

Chapter 5 was very interesting. It was about being professional in the software developer industry. Becoming a software professional entails being honest, knowing the can’s & cannot, ethics and having a code of conduct. There was a very interesting story about Sandro Mancuso who was a slave to a company that he had work for. In this chapter, he stated that his old company had him start the work day at 5am and end at 8pm. I find this to be outrageous. I don’t think anyone should be working for that long, because it will burn an individual out, and most of the time, the code that they are putting in isn’t the very best. I hope they paid him a lot of money for having him work more than 10 hours a day.

Chapter 6 goes on to talk about the qualities of a good software. The author lists out steps that a software developer should follow in order to create great code. If you do this from the gecko, then in the future, maintaining it would not be a challenge. Being a professional in the workforce is imperative and one should always stick to being one in order to become successful.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Another sprint down in the books and this was a pretty tough sprint. There was a major road block that was in the way with the progress of our issue. This road block was called spring break. During spring break, I did not work on our issue at all. Before our break, we were assigned an issue, but we were not able to fix it. Our team reached out to the AMPATH maintainers, but they did not reach back to us. Thus, we were then given a new issue. Since we were given a new issue a little before the end of the sprint, not much was done. However, a new sprint is coming and I’m excited to work with my team on getting this issue resolved.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This blog post will revolve around chapters 3 and 4.

Chapter 3 starts of with a more in depth explanation of what the title of the book means (The Software Craftsmanship). In the book, the author gave his take on what being a software craftsman is.

 Software craftsmanship is a long journey to mastery. It’s a mindset where software developers choose to be responsible for their own careers, constantly learning new tools and techniques and constantly bettering themselves. It is about putting responsibility, professionalism, pragmatism, and pride back into software development.

I like the part where the author had stated that a a software developer chooses to be responsible for their own careers. I believe that if you want to be a good developer, one should constantly be learning and keeping up with the trends and technologies.

Chapter 4 talks about what kind of attitude a software craftsman should have. One of the most important thing in this field is to be responsible. You as a developer must keep your self up to date with technology trends in order to stay relevant. The author then goes on to give us some tips on how we can keep up with the trends.

• Reading books, blogs, technical websites
• Keeping a blog to document and track progress

The last thing that the author talks about in this chapter is about time management. As we grow older, we find that time is not on our side. The author reminds us that there is always time to practice. We just have to limit our time with certain activities.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.