Technical debt is a programming theory that refers to the necessary work that gets delayed during the development of a software project to meet a deadline or deliverable. It is an idea that shortcuts are taken to quickly deliver a product, but this decision incurs a “debt” that must be paid in the future when the work is eventually completed. Technical debt is often the result of a tradeoff between perfect products and the short timelines often required for product delivery. Developers may choose the easier route with messier code or design to deliver a product faster, but this can lead to technical debt that must be addressed later.

Technical debt can accumulate “interest” over time, increasing the difficulty of implementing changes and leading to software entropy. It is important to manage technical debt to avoid these negative consequences. This involves identifying technical debt, accounting for nonfunctional requirements, and implementing best practices and agile practices to minimize it. It is also important to be proactive in reducing technical debt in new initiatives by carefully planning and designing projects from the start.

I selected this post because I wanted to learn more about technical debt as I found the concept to be particularly interesting and relevant to my future projects. This topic also seemed important as I found it amazing that despite the large file structure for projects in this class, it was not too difficult to add and update code for the assignments. That showed me how a codebase can avoid technical debt to a degree, and how it simplifies for maintainers (or a group of students) the process of adding and updating code to the codebase. After reading through the blog, I gained a better understanding of what technical debt is and how it can accumulate over time. This really resonated with me as I can see how important it is to consider the long-term implications of the decisions, we make during the development process. One of the most valuable takeaways for me was learning about the various types of technical debt and how to identify them. This will be especially useful as I continue to learn and grow as a programmer. I also appreciated the discussion of best practices and agile practices for managing technical debt, as I can see how these approaches can help to minimize the amount of debt that is incurred. I expect to apply what I learned in my future practice by being more mindful of the potential impacts of my decisions and actively working to minimize technical debt whenever possible.

Source:

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/technical-debt-explained-the-complete-guide-to-understanding-and-dealing-with-technical-debt/#

From the blog Zed's Blog by Lord Zed and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

KISS is an American rock band formed in New York City in 1973. The band is known for its elaborate stage shows, which often feature pyrotechnics, fire breathing, and other special effects, as well as the use of makeup and costumes by the band members. In all seriousness…

The KISS principle, or Keep It Simple, Stupid, emphasizes the importance of simplicity in design and systems. By keeping things simple, you can better understand and meet the needs of customers and create products that are more user-friendly and effective. In the world of software and technology, the KISS principle is especially important, as people often have many options to choose from and may not understand complex technology. By following KISS, you can build a minimal viable product (MVP) that allows you to confirm or disprove your hypothesis with minimal work and deliver your product in a straightforward way that is easier for users to understand. Amazon, for example, lists the KISS principle as a core leadership principle, stating that leaders should always find ways to simplify. When designing, it is important to wireframe religiously, use universally understood concepts, and avoid distractions. By following KISS, designers and developers can create products that are more efficient, effective, and user-friendly, and that are easier to maintain and update over time. The KISS principle is often applied to the design of systems and user interfaces, as well as to the development of code and algorithms, to create products that are intuitive and user-friendly.

I selected thispost because I have always been interested in the principles of good design and how they can be applied to create better code as a result. The KISS principle is a concept that I have heard of before in other classes and especially in the Robotics class last semester. I wanted to learn more about this principle and after reading this post was impressed by the emphasis on simplicity and how it can lead to better products and user experiences. The post also focused heavily on real world applications and its outcome which helped me visualize it better. I found this material to be very informative and made me think about how I can apply the principles of simplicity and user-friendliness in my own projects and for other CS classes in the future. I expect to use what I learned from this resource in my future practice by being mindful of the KISS principle and always striving to create products that are simple, efficient, and user-friendly.

Source:

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/keep-it-simple-stupid-how-to-use-the-kiss-principle-in-design/

From the blog Zed's Blog by Lord Zed and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Two of the fundamental aspects of coding, Abstraction and composition, are discussed thoroughly in this blog as well as the overall impact these processes can have on the code as a whole, we discussed these two towards the beginning of the classes and how they have there rolls in being able to not only code better but to understand and lay out the structure of the code.

At first I didn’t really understand how reducing a problem to its most basic form could help when I need to make code to very Specific actions and work a certain way, however after utilizing those processes in order to simplify the problem, then follow up by building up from those basic models allows me to utilize basic code to solve my more advanced problems. This opened up my thought Process when it came to Writing code as now I could think of all of the previous Projects I had where I had to create multiple objects and set Attributes for each specific one, and now I could seamlessly do it on a larger scale reusing other basic code.

For abstraction, it is the process of reducing all of the but the most important details in the code and leaving all of the extra out, it is important as it all owes for the most basic process to be worked on, and then subsequent work can be delegated to the more advanced versions of that the problem. an Example would be to rather than making multiple functions for different things, we could makes basic function that can be implemented repeatedly and reused. We can look at an example of the duck Project where we looked at different models of these classes and we noticed that certain ducks needed specific flying actions or squeaking actions, so rather than making multiple classes for multiple different types of ducks we made a basic duck class and created specializations for them In order to better the overall structure and reduce clutter. Then the using Composition you may make the connections to the different Objects in order to share information. Using the Duck Project Again, we made different types of ducks with Connections being made to the main Duck class with all of the Parameters, then we made connections for the squeak and Fly behaviors.

The Writer Focus on some key Traits for Good Abstractions, that being Simple, Concise, and Reusable. These are the things to look for when you want to simplify the work you do.

Elliott, Eric. “Abstraction & Composition.” Medium, JavaScript Scene, 28 May 2020, https://medium.com/javascript-scene/abstraction-composition-cb2849d5bdd6.

From the blog cs@worcester – Marels Blog by mbeqo and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week I learned about concurrency in software. I read “Concurrent Programming Introduction” by Gowthamy Vaseekaran. Vaseekaran explains what concurrency is in programming as well as its positives and negatives of it. Overall it was an interesting post to read and I think it gave me a better understanding of how computers work.

Vaseekaran starts by explaining concurrency is the ability to run several programs or parts of a program in parallel. This can be a huge benefit for performing a time-consuming task that can be run asynchronously or in parallel. Vaseekaran then goes on to explain the reasons that led to the development of operating systems that allowed multiple programs to execute at the same time.

These factors are resource utilization, fairness, and convenience. Resource utilization is needed because when some programs have to wait for external operations there is downtime that could be used to let another program run. Fairness is when multiple users and programs have an equal claim on the computer’s resources. It is more beneficial to let them share the computer through finer-grained time slicing than to let one program run until it is down and then start the next one. 

The next thing Vaseekaran brings up is threads. Threads are a series of executed statements that are lightweight and have their own program counter, stack, and local variables. Threads are used to help run background or asynchronous tasks. They increase the responsiveness of GUI applications and take advantage of multiprocessor systems. Java uses at least one thread when running. Threads help java run more smoothly but there are risks. The main risk is when there are shared variables/resources. Deadlocks can also happen when threads are used and multiple processes get stuck waiting for each other.

This was a good amount of information to learn and I think Vaseekaran did a great job explaining what concurrency is and its ups and downs of it. Starting with the reasons why we use it and then explaining how it is useful for a programming language like java was a good way to make it easy to understand what it is and how it is used today in software development. I think it would be interesting to learn more about how threads can be used in java. Vaseekaran’s post was useful for understanding concurrency and what threads are but how exactly a java developer implements them was very brief here. I would like to know more about how that works exactly but this was a good introduction to the topic and was an easy read. I would definitely recommend Vaseekaran’s post to anyone trying to learn more about how software is run and how to make it efficient. 

Link: https://gowthamy.medium.com/concurrent-programming-introduction-1b6eac31aa66

From the blog CS@Worcester – Ryan Klenk's Blog by Ryan Klenk and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

One of the most Relevant and important aspects of programming that I have neglected for a while is commenting and proper technical Writing, when I first started out I figured I would just remember all of the changes I would make to my code and didn’t require the small notes in-between methods. later on I began to understand the importance when I began working with many different files that needed to work in tandem and couldn’t remember what each method I wrote did or how it worked in the system as a whole.

In this blog the author Goes over many of the different aspects of technical Writing from either commenting on each method to adding context to the code overall, the biggest take away I got from it is that code without Comments is Worthless, by reading the documentation you should be able to understand why the previous engineers made changes or added functionality to the code. this allows for other developers to come in and quickly understand what is going on and be able to delete or insert sections of code in order to continue the development cycle.

the Writer goes on to show many different examples with one being a sequence diagram that gives the step by step explanation of what the Sequence of the systems in play, much like the different design architectures we discussed in a previous class where it shows the link between user and the database. The Importance of this kind of writing is that it can convey the was the system is supposed to work together so if another developer were come along and look over the schema they would understand the process and be able to work off of that.

Oliveira, Vincent. “HOW TO WRITE Good Software Technical Documentation.” Medium, Medium, 15 June 2022, https://medium.com/@VincentOliveira/how-to-write-good-software-technical-documentation-41880a0e7814.

From the blog cs@worcester – Marels Blog by mbeqo and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Whenever you’re new to a thing, a comparative look at different tools can help you understand the problem by learning how each tool approaches a solution. As someone new to consuming and designing APIs for the web, I’m interested in understanding APIs by looking at the difference in approaches of the REST specification and the GraphQL query language. This post is based on Viktor Lukashov’s GraphQL vs. REST blog post, which explores some GraphQL basics from the perspective of a REST API user.

Priority: server-defined endpoints or client-defined queries

The largest difference mentioned by most sources is that a well-built REST API relies on extensive backend definitions of endpoints, while GraphQL puts the onus on the consumer to carefully query the correct data.

In REST, accessing multiple entities requires visiting an endpoint for each entity. These endpoints expose data through predefined parameters and responses. Meanwhile, GraphQL exposes a single endpoint while only returning data that corresponds to the consumer-defined query. This approach requires higher effort from the user, but allows them to construct tailored queries without the need for forethought from the API designer.

As a fan of query languages, I think this comparison is very favorable to GraphQL. For any interesting or useful dataset, a user exploring the data should have more ideas about how to observe it than its maintainers and gatekeepers will. Providing flexibility for query writers lets your interface be used in ways you can’t predict.

Implication: caching and performance

One upside of REST’s focus on a planned set of endpoints and parameters is that expected frequent responses can be use HTTP caching to improve performance. Responses to GET requests will be cached automatically, reducing server requirements and potentially improving response speed for future identical requests.

In GraphQL, the query writer is responsible for using a unique identifier to generate useful cache data. That said, the consumer may be able to use single queries across multiple tables that would require more than one REST API call to access.

Relying on architecture over following best practices is probably the better way to make performance accessible, which is a point in favor of REST.

Consequence: rules and security

Another difference Viktor mentions is how developers implement secrurity rules. REST’s default to the expansion of endpoint-HTTP method combinations includes setting rules on this basis. In GraphQL, with it its single-endpoint, rules are instead set per field. This may require a steeper learning curve, but it also provides more flexibility for easily making some attributes of an entity more available than others.

Conclusion: rigid or demanding

One recurring theme of this comparison is that REST APIs are built to be rigid, and another is that GraphQL requires higher effort from the client. This is how I would decide between the tools. If writing something that I expect to be querying frequently myself in new ways, I’d want the query freedom offered by GraphQL. If I wanted a small and fixed feature set, REST seems like the spec to follow.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tasteful Glues by tastefulglues and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.