For this week’s blog, I decided to do more research about pairwise testing. During my search for more information I found the blog “Pairwise Testing | What It Is, When & How to Perform?” by Kiruthika Devaraj. In this blog, Devaraj breaks down the process of pairwise testing in simple steps, along with the advantages and disadvantages. She first defines pairwise testing as a “permutations and combinations based software testing technique that tests each pair of input parameters to verify that the system functions correctly for all possible discrete combinations”. It uses a minimum set of test cases to test all possible discrete combinations. The purpose of this kind of testing is to test all possible discrete combinations of inputs without the need to test every single combination. This reduces the time, cost, effort, and number of cases that need to be written. It also allows the tester to identify errors that may occur when multiple different parameters are combined which in turn increases the overall quality of the software.

Devaraj then explains the disadvantages and challenges of this testing technique. One of the disadvantages that is explained is that it can be time-consuming especially if there are a large number of test cases. Another case is where assumptions can be false because pairwise testing relies on all pairs of parameters interacting to determine the results. She explains the challenges in bullet points to make it easier for the reader to comprehend. Some of the bullets include challenges in finding meaningful inputs and the correct set of inputs. If you don’t test carefully then the test coverage may not be enough. One also needs to determine how parameters interact with each other. 

The last few paragraphs of the blog describe using pairwise testing to speed up cross-browser testing. In this example, she explains the parameters that one would test (browser, operating system, device type, and screen resolution) and how to follow through with a real-world example. The author also includes a list of testing tools to help with automation for this type of testing.

The last section of this blog is the answers to frequently asked questions like “Is pairwise testing completely automatic?” and “How effective is pairwise testing at finding bugs?”. It helped clarify some aspects of the testing technique that weren’t explicitly answered earlier in the blog. 

Overall I think this blog was helpful in understanding pairwise testing especially because the author included a lot of examples. It gave me a better understanding of a testing technique that I may use in the future when I have to test a complex system that has multiple input parameters and multiple possible values for each parameter. 

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s blog I decided to talk about the pattern from chapter 4 called “Be the Worst”. This pattern describes the situation where you have taken every opportunity to learn and eventually have outgrown your team. In this situation, it is important that you find developers that are better than you. When you take this route you will need to put in a lot of work because your aim is not to stay at the bottom but work your way up. You will be able to use multiple methods like mimicking other developers until you are on the same level and them. 

I agree with the solution for this scenario. I have found that I learn a lot when I am the weakest on a team. I am able to study the code written by the stronger members of my team and get insight on their choices. I found that learning from another person also speeds the process along. During this process, its important to avoid bothering your other team members too much. Although it can be convenient to just ask others, you need to establish a way to learn on your own so you can avoid prohibiting thew progress of others.

As one can guess, this method has risks like dragging the team down and running the risk of being fired because your productivity is not as expected. I have experienced pressure to avoid bringing the team down along with a lack of confidence in my own abilities. The first steps to follow this pattern is to develop confidence in yourself and focus on learning. Second, I think it is important to have open conversations with your team members and speak up when you may be falling behind. As mentioned in my other blogs, I have worked on past teams where I had to learned from other members. During this process, we all kept each other updated on our progress and it was crucial for us to work together to finish by our deadline.

 I think this pattern aligns well with the way I’ve been developing my professional skills and I cant say that I disagree with anything. Following this path will definitely help with self-assessment because the more you know, the more you know what you don’t know. 

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s blog I decided to dive a bit deeper into writing testable code because I think it is a valuable skill. While searching for blogs that discuss this topic I found “TDD: Writing Testable Code” by Eric Elliott. In this blog, Elliott explains the importance of writing testable code barriers to writing testable code, and different tips to keep in mind to write testable code. 

The first thing he touches on is how a good quality process is essential to continuous delivery. One of the most important principles, he mentions, is the separation of concerns because “simplifies complexity and enhances the overall quality of your work”.

In the overview about testable code, he explains that achieving testable “allows for more efficient and effective identification of defects, ensuring higher quality and reliability”. The key characteristics of testable code are modularity (when code is organized into discrete units), clarity (code that is easily comprehensible), and independence (when code can be tested in isolation).One of the barriers of writing testable code that Elliott describes is tight coupling in code. The coupling in code is the instance where changing one part of the code can heavily impact or even break the functionality of another part in the code. If one part is changed there can be a chain reaction of bugs in various other parts of the code. Right coupling can be caused by parent class dependencies, shared mutable states, concrete class dependencies, event chains, state shape dependencies, control dependencies or temporal coupling. He explains that to write testable code you must reduce the forms of tight coupling mentioned because it makes testing easier and promotes a “more sustainable and scalable codebase”. This is why testable code and maintainable code are the same thing. 

Later he explains the test first vs test after approaches. The test first approach is the test driven development approach where tests are written before the code. The benefits include better developer experience and clearer requirements and design. The test after approach is where the tests are written after the implementation which leads to a probability of biased tests and reduced code coverage.

One of the last sections provided is about the separation of concerns which a  design principle for programs into distinct sections that  addresses separate concerns”. This principle is important because it allows independent testing and allows developers to isolate problems more effectively in addition to allowing the ability to make changes without unintended consequences. He describes that he likes to isolate into 3 distinct sections business and state logic (the core logic of the application), user interface, and I/O and effects (the part of the application that interacts with the database).

I think this source was well organized and easy to follow. It made the text easy to understand and provided great advice for writing testable code. I think the last section about how he likes to isolate the sections was especially helpful and I will keep it in mind for the future.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s blog, I decided to discuss the pattern from Chapter 2 called “Unleash Your Enthusiasm”. This pattern discusses the enthusiasm for learning that many software engineering apprentices experience and how you should show it because, at this point in your career, you can provide unique qualities. This section discusses the situation where you may find yourself holding back because you may find that you have more enthusiasm than your colleagues. This is because there may be pressure to conform to the norm whenever you work on a team. In addition to this, many teams mainly focus on delivering the next product or improving on the aspects of the development life cycle. It also explains the risk of exposing your enthusiasm to an established team. In this situation, the text explains if the morale of the team is low or if they are not very welcoming to newcomers, you might make a poor impression. In this case, the text mentions that the advice in the section should not be applied blindly because you need to consider team dynamics.

The reason that I decided to pick this pattern is that I have never thought of concealing or holding back my enthusiasm for my craft. Every team that I have gotten the pleasure of joining in some way really valued my enthusiasm and the skills that they could learn from me. I have always been on a team where we all encouraged each other to learn from someone else on the team. Needless to say, I have never thought about the possibility of making a bad impression because of my enthusiasm for the task. In hindsight, I can see how exposing your ignorance of a topic can upset a team that values competence over enthusiasm for learning. I do think this quote from the text holds truth to it because of my own experience: “it is actually healthier for a team to consist of people with varying levels of experience”. Tech is a fast-paced industry so everyone is forced to keep up with new trends. A team that has a diverse set of skills at different levels is bound to create a healthy environment. With that being said, I can’t say that I disagree with anything from this section but I will be more aware of unleashing my enthusiasm on certain teams.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week I decided to write about the pattern called “Retreat into Competence”. This pattern discusses the common occurrence of feeling out of your depth and what you should do about it. In the past couple of months,  I have been confronted with the depths of my lack of knowledge and realized just how overwhelming it can be. It is for this reason that I chose to read about the suggested solutions for this pattern.

The solution provided for this issue is to retreat into your knowledge to regain composure and then “then launch forward like a stone from a catapult”. This method will allow you to realize how far you’ve come and recognize what you are capable of. You need to overcome your fear of incompetence to grow. I agree with the statement that “sometimes you need to take one step back in order to take two steps forward” and how it is important to focus on moving forward as quickly as possible. It took me some time to reflect on this solution but I think this is because if you don’t force yourself to focus on moving forward you can get stuck by being too comfortable. 

For the most part, I agree with the text. It is definitely a risky solution because it is important that you recognize that it is only a temporary fix. You need to be honest with yourself and have discipline to stick to a time limit as suggested in the last paragraph. Although this is a good solution for certain situations and/or certain types of people, sometimes I think you just need to throw yourself into learning the new material. In the recent projects I worked on where I realized the extent of my ignorance, I decided to dive right into some resources to help me learn. I was working with tight deadlines and had to learn as much as I could to be a useful team member. Regardless of this fact, the core of this section gets one thing right, to do anything you must first tackle your fear of incompetence and inadequacy. Although my first solution is to dive into new material, I may come across a situation where it will be more helpful to take 2 steps back. This solution was definitely interesting to read about because it is very different from my usual approach.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s blog, I decided to find a blog that discusses test-driven development (TDD). I found a blog called “Test Driven Development is the best thing that has happened to software design” by Arek Torczuk. In this blog, the author walks through how they apply key elements through real examples. Throughout the blog, they explain their reasons for implementing TDD and walk through how to use TDD on code that is impossible to test. They split their explanation of how to test impossible code into small sections that include bits of example code to aid in the explanation. I found the organization of the blog along with the various examples to be particularly helpful in aiding the reader understand the topic and stay engaged.

The author first explains that TDD is implemented in a fail, pass, refactor cycle approach. They shorten the idea by explaining that “our focus remains on the ‘what’, and our knowledge of ‘how’ is postponed.” In this section, the author also provides a visual which I find to be effective in blatantly pointing out the important details of this section. They then go on to explain the differences between when tests are driven by code and when code is driven by tests. When tests are driven by code although the tests written for the code may pass it may not be the right approach as feedback about implementation and design may be lacking. There are 2 questions that one has to ask themselves when they take this approach: “When should I stop adding new tests?” And “Am I sure the implementation is finished?”. The latter approach (when code is driven by tests) forces you to ask yourself “What do I expect from the code?”. When code is driven by tests, you know when to stop. TDD provides fast feedback.

The various examples of code that are impossible to test were interesting to read through. One example I found fascinating was the “Bloated setup” and the “Mocking Hell” scenarios. The first scenario is where an object either has too many dependencies or the Single Responsibility principle has been broken. The author explained that in this case you should you should rethink your design. The latter is where a mock returns a mock that returns a mock.

Overall, I think this was an interesting read. I think reading through the various examples of how to test impossible code will be useful for the future as I will have to think through how to test different kinds of code and when I should rethink certain designs.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week I decided to discuss Unit testing because although we have finished a few activities on the subject, I would like to read up on it to get a better understanding of it. While searching for a blog to discuss, I found this blog called “Unit Testing Best Practices: 9 to Ensure You Do It Right” from Testim. This blog also discusses what a unit test is, why we write them, the benefits of unit testing, how to achieve testable code, who creates them, and the difference between unit testing and integration testing.

The text begins by explaining that unit tests focus on very small parts of the application in complete isolation and compare their actual behavior with the expected behavior. In this section, the idea of complete isolation is thoroughly explained with the idea that “you don’t typically connect your application with external dependencies”. This is what makes unit tests so fast and stable.

The next section explains why they are created in bullet points and have the main ideas bolded. This structuring is helpful to simplify the ideas for the reader and make sure that the main ideas stick out for them. These were the bolded parts of the bullet points in the section: unit tests help you find and fix bugs earlier, your suite of unit tests becomes a safety net for developers, unit tests can contribute to higher code quality, unit tests might contribute to better application architecture, unit tests can act as documentation, and detect code smells in your codebase. I think a lot of the ideas presented were easy to comprehend based on the bolded part but I had to read more about the last bullet point because the term” code smells”(signs that something is wrong with your code ) was not obvious to me. 

The section that explained the difference between integration testing and unit testing was fairly short because they narrowed the main idea down to a few sentences: “It’s all about the level of isolation. While unit tests have to be completely isolated, integration tests don’t shy away from using external dependencies….integration tests offer a more high-level view of the application than unit tests do. Because of that, the feedback they provide is both more realistic and less focused.”

The 9 best practices at the end are titled: Tests Should Be Fast, Tests Should Be Simple, Test Shouldn’t Duplicate Implementation Logic, Tests Should Be Readable, Tests Should Be Deterministic, Make Sure They’re Part of the Build Process, Distinguish Between The Many Types of Test Doubles and Use Them Appropriately, Adopt a Sound Naming Convention for Your Tests, and Don’t Couple Your Tests With Implementation Details. These tips are easy to understand based off of the title alone but throughout each section, the author uses bits of code as examples and bullet points to thoroughly explain each idea. In the future, I will refer to these tips when I need to write tests for a project I will work on.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week I decided to discuss the pattern called “Stay in the Trenches”. In this section, the problem presented is where you are offered a promotion into a role that will pull you away from programming. It mentions that this offer is an illusion of accomplishment that will test your sustainable motivation and determination to walk the long road.  I decided to pick this pattern because it involves the idea of sustainable motivations which is a pattern I wrote about previously. I am unsure about what is motivating me to stay in the field so I like thinking about these kinds of topics. I don’t think this section has really changed my mind about the way I think about my profession though.

Many people equate a promotion with success but in the problem presented (a promotion that would pull you away from programming), you will be trading the programming skills that you have worked to develop for said promotion. The tet calls for you to stay on your path and work with your manager to find other mechanisms to reward you for your excellent work. This means if your company refuses to be flexible, you should find opportunities somewhere else. 

I agree that it would be best to continue on the path of software engineering since you’ve dedicated a lot of time in an attempt to become a master but simply saying that if your organization is inflexible then you should find opportunities elsewhere is a bit easier said than done. I think you can love this path but if life knocks you down it may be a bit difficult to stay on the path. If you are able to find other opportunities, that’s great; you can continue on the path. If you have trouble finding other opportunities and you need the resources that the promotion can provide, then you may just have to take that promotion. I’m not saying that you have to give up software engineering forever, but you might have to take a little detour and stray from the path a little at least until you can find other opportunities elsewhere. You can still love software engineering and pick up projects in your free time but sometimes you have to be realistic in this society career wise. 

Lastly, I do think the list of possible alternate rewards for your excellence was great. It suggested to “consider whether there are standard constraints that could be loosened in your case” and to  “prepare a list of these alternative rewards so that when you reject that promotion, you’re in a position to negotiate based on a clear understanding of your own motivations”. I think those are very helpful suggestions.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week the pattern I decided to write about is from chapter 2. The pattern titled “Expose Your Ignorance” discusses something I’ve had to experience recently: letting those you’re working with fill the gaps in your knowledge. This section opens up with this quote by Jake Scruggs in “My Apprenticeship at Object Mentor”. The quote is “Tomorrow I need to look stupider and feel better about it. This staying quiet and trying to guess what’s going on isn’t working so well.” Opening this topic with that quote is impactful because I think a lot of people feel shame and would call themselves stupid for simple gaps in their knowledge when others have high expectations for them. It’s important to acknowledge that it’s okay to not know everything and be transparent about it instead of struggling alone while deadlines approach.

When I was working on a website with a group of other developers, we were all transparent with each other about our knowledge gaps for the tech stack we had to work with. This allowed us to play off of each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Some of us were more knowledgeable about the front end while others were more knowledgeable about what was required for the backend. I was more unfamiliar with what the front end required so I worked on the backend team. When we started working on the project, I was transparent about my lack of knowledge about JavaScript, routes, controllers, and HTTP requests. My team leader spent some time going over the material with me and provided some resources to research on my own. I then looked for more resources to learn. We also made an effort for everyone to learn a bit more about both the front end and the back end.

 In the text, it said, “Conceding to unspoken pressures and telling people what they want to hear is not a good way to build strong relationships.” I agree with this because our transparency made sure we were able to help each other grow and in turn strengthen our relationships with each other. Your reputation will be built off of your willingness to learn. There wasn’t any part that I could disagree with. When you’re honest about your ignorance you will end up picking up knowledge about a variety of technologies which will make it easier for you to adapt down the road.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week I decided to touch on static and dynamic testing. I wanted to find a blog that talks about different techniques for each type of testing. While searching I found the blog Static Testing VS Dynamic Testing – Key Differences testing by Kiruthika Devaraj. It first begins by generally defining the two types of testing. Devaraj first defines static testing as involving “testing the software without running it” and dynamic testing as involving “executing the program and testing its behavior in different scenarios”. They then go on to explicitly outline the differences in the next section. 

In the section titled “Differences Between Static Testing and Dynamic Testing”, they explain that static testing involves reviewing the documentation, design or code to check for defects and errors without executing the software. They also mention that this type of testing aims to identify issues early in software development when they are easier and less expensive to fix. They explained that dynamic testing involves executing the software and testing its behavior in different scenarios. They explain that during this process testers create test cases and run tests to identify defects and ensure the software meets the specified requirements. By testing the program against a variety of inputs, expected outputs, and error scenarios, this kind of testing essentially tries to evaluate the product’s functionality, performance, and security and ensure that it operates as predicted. In this section, the author uses bullet points and spacing to organize the information and make it easier to digest. 

The next section is a table that clearly outlines the differences in features like definitions, objectives, types of testing, timing, and results for static and dynamic testing. Static testing involves code review, walk-through, and inspection while the other involves unit, integration, system, acceptance, performance, security, and user acceptance testing. The author then explains how to choose between the two types of testing. They mention that it comes down to the specific requirements, objectives of the testing process, and desired outcomes. I enjoyed this article because the author got straight to the point when writing the article while clearly defining the use of each type of testing. I think the way they went about writing this informational piece was effective in keeping the reader’s attention by outlining the information in the simplest way possible. The use of bullet points and tables helped me to remember the information better. I am likely going to have to test my future personal projects so knowing the differences between the two types of testing and how to choose it was important to read about.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Live Laugh Code by Shamarah Ramirez and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.