Author Archives: chanson2016

Chapter 4 Reading

Chapter four is about writing comments. This chapter surprised me by saying comments are not typically a good thing. They make up for poor code that does not explain itself. This contradicts what I have learned throughout my few years coding here. I usually lose points on assignments if I do not add a great deal of comments explaining my code. This leads me to believe that my teachers do not expected us to write professionally when making our code. The chapter talks about using TODO comments. That is a practice that I have done when I know I will be taking a break from writing that part of the code with the intent of coming back to finish it. If you can avoid using comments by writing self explanatory code, then you should do so. However, when this isn’t possible, you should write short comments that explain what is happening in the code.

From the blog chanson2016 by chanson2016 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Chapter 2 + 3 Reading

Chapter two was a very repetitive chapter. The main point of the chapter was to make sure you pick names for variables, methods, classes, and objects that make sense. The names should be understood by everyone and be easily distinguished from any other names used. The complexity of the names should also reflect the complexity of the variable or method.

Chapter three is about functions and how they should be simple yet effective. They should only do  one thing and have descriptive names that describe what that one thing is. You want your functions to be well organized so that they are easy to follow. You have to be willing to change your functions to keep them organized. You should make sure to have tests that pass no matter how you change them around.

These chapters are about keeping your code organized and easy to follow while still being functional.

From the blog chanson2016 by chanson2016 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Chapter 1 Reading

This reading is about being professional. Being professional is necessary to better yourself as a software developer. The reading talks a lot about challenging yourself to spend your free time learn new skills or study up on old ones. It stresses that doing this will make you a better coder that will make the jobs of your colleagues and employers easier. It will help your career to be better at coding. I agree with this chapter because putting in a few hours every day for yourself will greatly improve your skills and make you worth more to future employers. It talks about making your code flexible and make sure to test your code often. You should change your code often to make sure it is flexible. By testing often you are able to catch more bugs and make yourself better at not making the same mistakes over and over again. Being professional is more than just doing your job, it is learning more skills to make yourself better.

From the blog chanson2016 by chanson2016 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Installing OpenMRS

Let me start by saying this was a project within itself. Throughout the installation process there were multiple errors that took a fair amount of time to fix. The process started with installing IntelliJ. This was not much of an issue just a simple download. Then you have to clone the OpenMRS-core to your computer using git and add an upstream. This again was simple. You then needed to install Maven and a SDK. We were given directions to do this and the hardest part was changing the environment variables correctly. The next step was to do a clean install through Maven. This is where I ran into problems. It was coming up with an error with the sure-fire plugin. This error was caused by a Junit error. I ran a clean install that skipped this test and then it installed correctly. You could have also fixed this problem by opening your Open-MRS-core in IntelliJ and clicking on the build button. There will be errors in the code. You go to the Junit errors and do a quick fix and then run the maven clean install again and it should work. The next step was to run a jetty:run through maven. This also gave me an error because I did not have the jetty plugin. I looked up how to add the plugin and it involved adding code to the pom file of the project and updating a settings file. The directions were easy to find on google. You just had to find the correct spot in the code to add it. You then had to change your directory to the web-app directory and run jetty:run again. This time it will open a server and you go to http://loginhost.8080/openmrs. At this point you need to have MySQL, so you need to find a download on line and go through the installation process. You then follow the instructions to install the OpenMRS server. After the install you need to download the Legacy UI. After all of this OpenMRS is installed and ready to go.

From the blog chanson2016 by chanson2016 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Introductory Blog Post

Hello,

I am Christopher Hanson, a senior at Worcester State. I am starting this blog as part of an assignment for my senior capstone class. We are working with OpenMRS for our project and most of the posts will be about our progress on that assignment.

From the blog chanson2016 by chanson2016 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.