In this blog post, I will be talking about the various ways one can make their code reviews better. The blog that I am referencing is titled “How to Make Good Code Reviews Better” and is published on the Stack Overflow blog. The blog post outlines multiple strategies for people to improve their code reviews. These strategies include maintaining a respectful tone, offering specific and constructive feedback, and trying to focus specifically on high-impact areas. Furthermore, the importance of maintaining a balance between efficiency and thoroughness is highlighted in the blog, as balancing those two is very important if you want to ensure that reviews don’t become a barrier for your team during the development process.

I chose this blog because I thought that it would be a resourceful blog to read through, as these strategies can definitely help in the future for my professional career. This also relates to what we learned in class, as the blog heavily focuses on collaboration which can be tied back to our discussions about agile development.

This blog made me realize that code reviews should not be harsh critiques, but rather helpful conversations that provide insight on what should be improved in your code. It shouldn’t feel like a negative conversation, it should be supportive and friendly which creates a better working environment. For me, it also brings encouragement, as workers will feel more encouraged to improve upon their code if their coworkers are actively supporting them. Code reviews should be focused on the “what” and “how” rather than just listing all of the flaws of the code.

The blog also mentions how people should be reviewing for the future by providing insights that extend beyond the immediate fixes in order for the code to have better maintainability. The reviews should, of course, fix the immediate problems, but should also set up the program for better and for consistent success in the future. It should be focused on the sustainability of the code rather than just fixing all the short-term problems but not addressing how it will look in years. In general, every line of code that one writes should be written with the long-term impact of said code in mind.

Going forward, I am planning on applying these strategies of good code review in my professional career as well as my current academic career. If I am reviewing the code of a peer, I will aim to give constructive feedback that makes it feel encouraging rather than simply telling someone all the problems with their code. Doing this creates a better workplace environment where people feel comfortable with expressing their thoughts and opinions about things, creating a better team atmosphere and promoting teamwork and collaboration. I will also welcome feedback from peers about my work, as it is important to listen to the feedback of your peers, as in the end we are all working together towards a common goal.

Link: https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/09/30/how-to-make-good-code-reviews-better/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Coding Canvas by Sean Wang and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

In this blog post, I will be talking about why software maintenance is important in an organization setting. The blog post that I am referencing is titled “Why Software Maintenance is Necessary,” and is published by Radixweb. The blog highlights four types of maintenance, with those being corrective, adaptive, perfective, and preventative. For each type, it is explained how it contributes to th elong-term functionality of a software, as corrective maintenance involves fixing bugs or errors, while adaptive maintenance ensures that the evolving technologies will be compatible. Furthermore, perfective maintenance focuses on enhancing the overall performance and usability of the software, while preventative maintenance focuses on lessening any potential issues before they can occur.

The blog also mentions how software maintenance is directly aligned with the goals of a business or organization. If a company were to neglect software maintenance, that would lead to vulnerabilities in their security, as well as potential technical debt. This is an interesting point, as it makes it very clear how important software maintenance is to an organization, as neglecting it would lead to major problems.

I selected this blog because it relates to our discussions in class regarding software maintenance. We touched on it in class, but I wanted to take a deeper look into it and research more about its importance. Through my research, my knowledge regarding software maintenance expanded, as I was able to learn even more about the details of it and why it is important in a professional setting.

After reading this blog post, I realized that maintenance can sometimes be overlooked in a group setting, as it becomes something that gets done automatically but is never really focused on. Maintenance kind of feels like something that is only done when something is broken, but in reality is should be something that is done regularly and often. I feel like maintenance is something that should be very high priority, as neglecting it can heavily damage companies, and can lead to bad habits of employees in a company all neglecting it, with all of them basically pushing the task to someone else instead of doing it themselves.

Moving forward, I plan to put a bigger focus on preventive maintenance in my professional career. It could be as a manager or as a team member, but I will always look to allocate time towards maintenance. This can be done in multiple ways, as you can conduct maintenance checks for compatability regularly, or even schedule audits every once in a while for preventive maintenance.

Link: https://radixweb.com/blog/why-software-maintenance-is-necessary

From the blog CS@Worcester – Coding Canvas by Sean Wang and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

We spent a lot of time in class going over the different types of software licenses and the reasoning for why they are necessary, so I figured that it would make sense to dig deeper into the topic.

The blog that I selected introduces software license management as a way to strategically optimize and manage the usage of software within a company or organization. The blog post defines software license management (SLM) as the process of ensuring compliance within software licensing agreements but also minimizing any overspending and inefficiency throughout the entire process. The blog post also mentions the reasons for why SLM matters, as it points to the overall operational benefits that comes with proper SLM as well as the general legal and financial risks that are associated with non-compliance. Throughout the blog, the various types of licenses are all mentioned and explained, such as open-source, copyleft, and permissive licenses.

I selected this blog post because of its relevance to what we learned in class, as it gave a refresher on software licenses and also gave further elaboration on the overall subject. This blog also shows why software license management is important to a company, as it often leads to an increase in overall operational efficiency as well as compliance efficiency. This could be useful for me in the future as this article explained the importance of SLM in a workplace environment, which is very useful context to have.

This article gave me a larger understanding of software license management and the benefits of it. It also helped clarify my understanding of how companies tailor their strategies based on their operational needs, as the differentiation of software license types made this clear to me. I was very intruiged by the risks of not having SLM, as this can lead to a lot of inefficiencies as well as costly penalties for an organization, which is something that I never really considered thinking about. At the end of the article, it shows and lists a bunch of automation tools for SLM, which I found very interesting. This made me think about how technology can really simplify complex tasks, which can be both beneficial and detrimental at the same time for my future. For my future, I intend on applying this knowledge of software licenses and SLM potentially in future workplaces. To me, the benefits outweigh the negatives as implementing SLM will only increase efficiency within the company, which I think is generally a goal for most companies. Overall, this blog post did a great job at explaining the different types of software licenses, and showing me why software license management is so important, as well as why it is necessary when it comes to overall efficiency within an organization.

Source: https://whatfix.com/blog/software-license-management/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Coding Canvas by Sean Wang and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Link to blog: https://codingsans.com/blog/clean-code

Clean code has been a major topic in our discussions for the past few weeks, as we’ve seen plenty of examples of both clean and bad code. We’ve learned the reasonings for why someone would write bad code, as well as the importantance of clean code. While those discussions enhanced my understanding of clean code, I wanted to take a deeper dive into it and get another person’s viewpoint on the topic. Through my research, I found Clean Code: The Manager’s Guide to Building Quality Software by Gábor Zöld.

Throughout his blog, Zöld provides a deep dive into what clean code is and why it is important, as well as general principles one should follow when writing code. He also provides advice for managers who may be looking for ways to encourage their team members to prioritize the use of clean code in their projects. He also provides an overview on the current state of software development as well as the ethics that a developer should be following when writing code.

I chose this resource because it applies to what we have been learning for the past few weeks, and it provides insight on how clean code operates in a workplace. The blog is based off of the clean code principles from Robert C. Martin, which we went over in class. This blog is also very well organized and easy to read, which shows that Zöld clearly knows what he’s talking about.

The key takeaways that I would have from reading this blog post would be to esnure that the functions that I write are as small as possible and contain descriptive variable names. I also came away with the fact that clean code actually makes you work faster, as if you are trying to push code out to meet a deadline you won’t be as efficient coding in an unorganized workspace. From an employee’s point of view, it is very important to focus on the quality of your code, as well as to understand the human aspect of it and to be trustful and understanding of other developers.

This material made me more aware of some of the bad habits that I have when writing code. I now notice that sometimes I will rush code just to try to finish it fast, but it ends up leaving a messy chunk of code that I have to reorganize later. However, if I followed the principles of clean code from the beginning, it would’ve saved a lot of time and also would’ve been more beneficial to my learning. Moving forward, I’m going to apply these principles to all of my future coding projects by focusing on the names and sizes of functions, ensuring that the names are descriptive and that they don’t take up too much space. I’m also going to apply some of Zöld’s comments regarding the workplace in the future, specifically his points of being understanding towards your other developers and coworkers.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Coding Canvas by Sean Wang and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.