It was cool to navigate the LibreFoodPantry website and get a better understanding of their company ahead of helping with website development. While exploring their page, I came across the agile values and principles and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software. One of the principles I found interesting was the embracement of changing requirements, even late in development. This is to provide continuous change and adaptations to the product for the customer’s competitive advantage. I chose to write about this because the typical thought process is to stay the course and follow the original plan. However, for an ever changing product market, it is more valuable to welcome the change of requirements rather than staying the course of the original plan.

Thea’s Pantry has a lot of valuable information that is organized in a simple manner that makes it easy for users to navigate. The “User Stories” was a helpful page as it gives insight as to how the process works for a specific cause. For example, they list the steps for when a guest visits the pantry and the different possible outcomes that can happen from it. I chose to write about this because I found it very valuable to get a full understanding of the different types of user interactions that will occur with the website. This will help in the development process as there will be more insight with the website and give a better grasp on the best way to fix the problems and enhance the user experience.

https://librefoodpantry.org/

Developer/UserStories.md · spring2024-updates · LibreFoodPantry / Client Solutions / Theas Pantry / Documentation · GitLab

From the blog CS@Worcester – Jason Lee Computer Science Blog by jlee3811 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Introduction:

Delving into these platforms has provided a comprehensive understanding of LibreFoodPantry’s objectives and operations.

LibreFoodPantry:

The “Values” section particularly stood out, illustrating the organization’s dedication to Agile Principles and FOSSisms, underscoring a culture of collaboration, openness, and community-focused development. These aren’t mere terminologies; they form the foundation for the initiation, development, and maintenance of projects like Thea’s Pantry.The emphasis on values addresses the need for ethical considerations in technology development, highlighting LibreFoodPantry’s commitment to transparency, inclusivity, and community welfare. This approach serves as a reminder that successful projects are rooted in a solid framework of guiding principles.

Thea’s Pantry:

The “Architecture” documentation of Thea’s Pantry revealed a meticulously planned structure of subsystems, designed for scalability, maintainability, and user-centricity. This approach not only showcases technical sophistication but also reflects the organization’s values in its architectural design, ensuring the system’s adaptability and resilience.The architecture’s distinction lies in its embodiment of LibreFoodPantry’s values, focusing on inclusivity, accessibility, and adaptability, thus fostering solutions that are both innovative and considerate.

Conclusion:

Investigating LibreFoodPantry and Thea’s Pantry has highlighted the intersection of technology and social responsibility, demonstrating the power of community collaboration in leveraging technology for societal benefit. This exploration reaffirms the importance of foundational values in driving meaningful technological solutions.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Abe's Programming Blog by Abraham Passmore and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

After reading LibreFoodPantry’s main page I thought that their mission was really interesting because not only are they trying to make the food pantry more accessible and easy to use but they are also using it as a learning tool for computer science students and expand their skills. LibreFoodPantry wants to show that software can be used to help society and support food pantries as well as their guest all over with free and open-source software. FOSS gives students a perspective on computing being used for good. I chose to write about this because I feel like it’s an important computer science skill while also helping the community. Students can connect with experts who can help them when they are struggling with their contributions to the pantry from being part of the community.

I know we worked on Thea’s pantry last semester but something I thought was interesting was the architecture of Thea’s pantry. Thea’s Pantry uses 5 systems for client solutions and those systems use calls to pass data to those other systems. The diagram shows what server is being called and where it’s sending or receiving information from. I chose to write about this because it’s cool to see how those 5 systems run and connect. Thea’s pantry has a lot that goes into it and it’s interesting to see specifically how each system works and how they connect.

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

Website Review

The content from the LibreFoodPantry website was very informative and easy to follow. However, the content was information I have already received due to multiple in-class discussions regarding the project. Instead, I would like to take the time to review the website design and ease of use. One highlight of this website is the use of knowledge given, no matter the user background. This website caters to users who might come here wanting to know what this project is doing for the world, while others may come to learn more about the technical side of this project. The landing page acts as this buffer, giving a quick snapshot of this project as a whole, while providing additional pages to those who would like to know more. Also, this website has dark mode available and is easy to find!

Gitlab Review

One thing that surprised me was that each system had an experiment group that could be used. The purpose of this group is to allow users to create temporary projects that are used for educational use only and will not be pushed to production. I wrote about this as something I haven’t seen yet or heard much about. I find this to be a much more organized way to handle temporary files without the accidental chance of being pushed to production.

From the blog CS@Worcester – CS: Start to Finish by mrjfatal and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hey everyone!

LibreFoodPantry’s mission is to expand a community of students and faculty who believe software can be used to help society. Specifically, they strive to support local food pantries with free and open source software to help serve their guests. This provides students with the perspective that computing can be used for social good. I found LibreFoodPantry’s goal of using technology for humanitarian aid to be an admirable and useful cause.

The user stories for Thea’s Pantry illustrate some of the key functions the software needs to provide. This includes guest check-in, tracking visits across calendar weeks, recording new inventory donations, looking up current inventory levels, and generating reports. An example is allowing staff to log in and enter guest’s university ID numbers to pull up their registration details. If it’s their first visit, they can fill out a new form which gets saved. For returning guests, staff can review and update details. The system also tracks how much food guests take across multiple visits within the same week. Other stories cover administrators verifying inventory levels and creating monthly reports for partners like the Worcester County Food Bank. I chose to highlight the user stories as they outline valuable features to aid Thea Pantry’s operations through customized software.

The LibreFoodPantry mission and Thea’s Pantry user stories provide insight into the principles and functionality behind developing customized software for food assistance organizations.

January 21, 2024

andicuni

CS@Worcester

CS-448,

Set-up Task #3

From the blog CS@Worcester – A Day in the Life as a CS Blogger by andicuni and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

   Both the main GitLab page for Libre Food Pantry and its repository for Thea’s Pantry were very informative about the overall project and its desired direction. While Libre Food Pantry is a more broad project which contains Thea’s Pantry as a client the webpage was very informative not only on the standard for developing but also for the purpose of this free code.

   The main thing that caught my eye on librefoodpantry.org was the mission page as the page explains that this project is meant to aid humanitarian organizations (food pantries) and help modernize their inner workings. I chose to write about this as I was surprised that multiple other universities are also apart of the project and using it to teach computer science students more about teamwork and different types/categories of code.

   Thea’s Pantry on the other hand as it is a client solution and has more specified content including three systems with frontends and backends there is a lot more code to dive into. The thing I found most interesting in Thea’s Pantry was the Reporting System as this system is not something I would initially think of when developing software for use in a Food Pantry but it is definitely something very useful when it comes to tracking incoming and outgoing products. I chose to write about the reporting system as when reading about the different systems I found the reporting to be something more unique which is not necessarily seen in a large portion of food pantries as a reporting system is not included in the same way in the other projects of Libre Food pantry.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Dylan Brown Computer Science by dylanbrowncs and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

When I explored the page for Libre food pantry I found the coordinating committee page to be very interesting. I chose this as the most interesting because it shows the different universities and shop managers that are working on this project. I found that there are people from Nassau Community College, Western New England University, Drexel University, alongside Worcester State who are working on Libre food pantry. I did not know it was such a collaborative effort between so many universities.

While reviewing the Gitlab for Thea’s pantry, I found that going through the workflow and architecture documentation was especially helpful. In the summer, when I was working on linters for Libre Food Pantry and Theas Pantry, I got to get a look at some of the systems for Thea’s pantry but I did not thoroughly understand what each system uses. The part of the architecture documentation that explains the features and their components thoroughly laid out how the systems work together. I found the integration and deployment diagrams to be helpful in providing a visual aspect of how the systems work together. The workflow documentation was helpful because it served as a reminder of the workflow that I used during the summer. The bullet point about using a “breaking change” footer or a “!” after the type if the work introduces a breaking API change is helpful because I’ve never worked on a breaking change.

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.