I want to focus this blog post not on something that I’m interested in but rather something I think that I should know. I decided to put some more research into design smells, this topic seemed valuable because I have this perception that understanding and looking at code is not a skill that I have yet to developed. I wish to improve upon this, so I found this presentation on code refactoring and design smells that is pretty in depth and it goes into a little more detail about what we had discussed in class. In the class activity we connected technical uses of the word to technical definitions based on our understanding of the common definition. This activity provided a basis for understanding different smells. This led me to find a higher-level presentation on design smells and grasp some level of understanding of what was being discussed. In the video the speaker Sandi Metz suggests that when you can identify a code smell you can then refactor the code to better suite future use. What refactoring is, is the ability to rearrange code without changing its behavior. The ability to look at code and associate information is exactly what I am looking for.

There were a couple of ideas that stood out to me. The presenter offered an analogy that stood out to me that  refactoring is kind of like a recipe. Sandi then provides a valuable resource that maps specific code smells to a reference in Martin Fowlers book , a refactoring recipe that is “curative”  to that code smell. This leads me to another suggestion that it is okay at some level to “own your code smell” if it is working and won’t change in the future. This reference to Martin Fowlers books immediately reminded me of his very informative blog. The book itself seems very interesting to me and could potentially offer a wealth of valuable knowledge that could vastly improve my abilities.

As an avid home cook this analogy spoke to my soul, all this talk of smells and recipes sparked an understanding of code that I was not familiar with. In my journey as a home cook, I have been exploring the ability to make food more creatively as instructed by a transformative cookbook that I have been reading. There is an idea that I have been working on that suggests not following a recipe and relying on your senses and being actively involved to create a wonderful dish. I find that this relates heavily to my journey in becoming a software developer, taking information from outside resources and interpreting it in a practical way all while relying on my senses and built intuition.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Sovibol's Glass Case by Sovibol Keo and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Setting goals allows me to take things one at a time and move over those self-imposed barriers effortlessly, but it is the learning and the love of the process that don’t even allow me to put those barriers there in the first place.
Now on to one of the actual goals, I have been wanting to use what I am learning as a computer science major to implement into my current workplace. I think that it has been a great opportunity to work there and they have provided a good environment for self-development similar to that of being in school. As a token of appreciation, it would mean a lot to me to be able to leave something useful behind. That something useful would be in the form of Software. In the past year or so I have had a level of engagement in my courses that I haven’t had in a while and that is most likely due to recognizing the practical application of what I’m being taught. This has led me to be vigilant at my workplace and observe problems that can be solved with software. After figuring out what the problems are and defining those issues
For a while, I have been stuck on what to do now after defining the problems from the software development class, and based on the topic of my last two blog posts it is clear to me that figuring out suitable architecture is important to a well-developed software system. To do this, I need to understand the important requirements of the users involved. Currently, I am under the impression that microservices architecture would be most suitable as many of its defining characteristics would fulfill the requirements of the business. Within this process of developing software, I am learning that there is a lot of picking and choosing systems that are specific to the needs of the business. Although it can still be overwhelming, I am relieved that there are already many preexisting systems and that picking and choosing make it a little easier instead of having to completely create something from scratch. On the aspect of picking already developed systems, the topic of API comes into mind I found this useful article outlining different APIs and their use cases and how some are still in use today and fit specific needs. The article points to the idea that even though some APIs might seemingly be outdated that they still have a use case that only requires such an API and nothing more.

I understand that I still have a lot to look out and plenty to learn but recognizing that there is a direct application to what I am learning provides some great motivation and hope that will allow me to continue to get over whatever barriers may be in the way whether self-imposed or not.

https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/soap-vs-rest-vs-graphql-vs-rpc/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Sovibol's Glass Case by Sovibol Keo and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Being able to optimize software development is very important but the practice of optimizing can be a constant battle when attempting to create good software. The last class I took prior to CS-343 was CS-373, an Operating Systems course. The final project of that course had us create our own phone applications, and while it was exciting to finally work on such a project, it turned out to be very difficult in some aspects. I had the idea of creating a finance app. It was supposed to record ones spending habits throughout the coming months and weeks- planning out a minimum amount they should spend and save. I thought it was going to be very easy to implement and I wrote down ideas that the application software was going to include such as a credential screen, a colorful UI, a splash screen with the logo, etc. The idea of implementing a way of connecting actual bank accounts to gather information was also in play. Unfortunately due to my lack of experience It was hard for me to complete my vision and at the end of the day, I was only able to submit an unfinished application.

There were many reasons for such results, first off, the code was a mess. I would write countless lines of code, and the program, for being a simple finance application, took ages to write. I had to implement over 1000 lines of code just to record information like user spending and budget analytics. It was a nightmare because my only priority was to get my code to work but how the code was organized would stop me in my tracks. I would sit in front of my computer screen for hours looking for compiler errors or logic errors. It made development very frustrating. I’ve taken classes such as CS-348 which served the purpose of explaining how to completely avoid similar issues that I was having, but this project being my first big project, it proved to be a lot more difficult to make a habit of those practices than anticipated. With that being said, the purpose of this blog will be to record my software development process. Whether it be a new technique I’ve learned, a new technology that has really helped me, and whatnot.

From the blog cs-wsu – FindKelvin by Kelvin Nina and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.