Author Archives: osworup007

The Clean Coder: Chapters 3 & 4

The 3rd chapter “Saying Yes” from the book “The Clean Coder” by author Robert C. Martin, revolves around the language of commitment. Martin introduces one of his colleagues, Roy Osherove in order to give a better judgement and analysis of the words Martin said during his workdays “I’m committed . . . I guess.” Osherove thoughts clearly indicates that the statement as a bad one. He talks about the three main points of commitment.

1. You say you’ll do it.

2. You mean it.

3. You actually do it.

For most of the times, till now when I, myself commit to do a certain task I just thought to do it at some point in time. But, now I came to realize that I was just following step 1 and step 2 at most. From now onwards, I will be very sure on my own commitment that I actually Say, Mean, and Do.

Furthermore, Osherove clearly defines signs of non-commitment such as the words: Need\should, Hope\wish. Luckily, I wasn’t using those for making my commitments, so I considered to be on the safe side. Although making a dialect commitment may sound somewhat unnerving, it can help take care of a significant number of the correspondence issues. On the off chance that you can’t make your commitment, the most critical thing is to raise a warning as quickly as time permits to whoever you focused on.

Moreover, chapter 3 has more to offer on learning how to say “yes”. Professionals are not required to state yes to everything that is asked of them. However, they ought to strive to discover innovative approaches to make “yes” conceivable. After reading this portion of the chapter, I will bear the responsibility to maintain certain standards. I learned where to draw the line of professionalism with regard to family (hopefully in future) and my working time. I should be clear about the work-load, overtime, and ultimately the cost of it.

Chapter 4: “Coding” discusses the act of coding, and the context that surrounds that act. The main theme of this chapter is that, “Dedication and professionalism are more about discipline than hours. Make sure that your sleep, health, and lifestyle are tuned so that you can put in eight good hours per day.” Author Martin has different way of coding, so do I. He believes his creative output are usually generated with driving home and while taking the shower. Meanwhile, he doesn’t mix his music with coding. Writing about myself, I found myself productive when I am more close to nature and its surrounding.

With that being said, coding does requires many competing factors at once. First and foremost is that the code must work, and must fit well into the existing system. It also must be easy to read by other programmers. Some of the times I found myself not writing the complete code and just leaving in the middle just because it’s too hard. For this, from now I will seeking for a help to get my project move forward. Furthermore, a simple external force interrupts my coding time. Next time, as the author suggests pairing can be very helpful as a way to deal with interruptions, I will find a partner to reconstruct the mental context I usually have before interruption.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Software Dev Capstone by osworup007 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Reflection: Week 1

The first week classes basically revolved around an overview of the materials going to be covered throughout the entire semester. We spent mostly on team formation. Each team will be working on an OpenMRS project named AMPATH. Team members are connected via Slack where we all be sharing our Scrum and other project related resources every week as we move along. We also read an ebook “Scrum: A Breathtakingly Brief and Agile Introduction”. The example some of we practiced on the CS348-Software Process Management class was really helpful. Knowing Scrum methodology for the first time provided a sense of progress and responsibility for the project as iterative cycles ends up with some output.

Looking forward to setup OpenMRS and to learn Angular 2 in the next upcoming week.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Software Dev Capstone by osworup007 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Clean Coder, Chapters 1 & 2.

“The Clean Coder: A Code of Conduct for Professional Programmers” is the first book I am reading by the author Robert C. Martin. Going through the pre-requisite introduction portion of the book Martin noticeably states that this particular book is full of catalog of his errors from his 42 years of experience in software engineering field and a set of guidelines to avoid them. I am expecting a lot of takeaways form this book for my Capstone course and professional career as well.

Chapter 1: “Professionalism” discussions about the taking responsibilities and the various ways to be able to accomplish the responsibilities in regard of the true essence of professionalism. First part of chapter surrounds with the things every software professional should be familiar with such as Test Driven Development approach, QA process, code flexibility and so on. Of course these principles are important during the software development process. When the writer starts to talks about gaining credibility and trust through continuous learning, practice, collaboration, and customer service; things get excited. I agree with the writer how learning process is necessary for self-empowerment. Being up-to-date with the new disciplines and techniques is a must in Computer Science field. Similarly, practice help individual to refine and enhance our skills. Personal drive and team-building skills are valuable and necessary for developers striving for the top of the profession, but more is required. Though most developers bring a project to the table, pushing it through requires a strong ethic of customer service. Customer is critical because it establishes a path that helps make sure that the features you are developing are really going the address your customer’s need.

Chapter 2: “Saying No” focuses upon team work. Martin gives a clear vision of how to be a successful team player. He states a team player is not someone who says yes all the time. Sometimes the only way to get to the right yes is to be unafraid and say no. I completely agree with the thought that, “What we all have to realize is that saying yes to dropping our professional disciplines is not the way to solve problems.” It rapidly becomes impossible to control all aspects of all the projects within a large area of responsibility. It is critical to develop teams that can bring the necessary talents to bear without requiring your direct intervention.

 

From the blog CS@Worcester – Software Dev Capstone by osworup007 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

First post

This is my first CS 448 blog post.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Software Dev Capstone by osworup007 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.