Category Archives: Software Capstone Reflections

Reflection Sprint 6 (Final Sprint)

There are a lot of things that I was hoping to accomplish during this class some were just pipe dreams, some were attempted, and some actually got done. We will get to that at the end, but first the last sprint review.  During this sprint, we were hoping to finish and commit our bug fix. Unforchanatly this was not the case. Due to work and other classes projects and assignment we were unable to accomplish this feat. So instead of talking about what could have been, I will detail our thoughts on this issue and some potential ways of accomplishing this.

We ran into a bit of a wall again during this sprint. At my internship, I learned that they use a module for messaging the user that every part of the web app can use. This is what I was looking for in our capstone project but I was thoroughly stumped. I couldn’t figure out how the web app was sending info to the users some were using inline text in the HTML files, but others were calling it from the database I believe. So using what I learned from earlier to ask for help I asked for help. Well, this proved to be a huge waste of time because I received no answer. So I delved into the problem myself. We were looking for a universal module that handled messaging that we could call to display the message. What I came up with was trying to use the display error message module but this only lead to a large red box within the edit contacts page. Then I started to try and implement an observer pattern where the edit contacts page would be the subject and the contacts page would be an observer. So when something changed within the edit contacts module the contacts page would open small HTML box that would supersede the other divs and have a line of text “contacts have been saved”. Unforchantly I could not finish this within the sprint.

Leaving this class I have gained some helpful knowledge. First and most importantly I have gained some knowledge with web development and I would like to look more into this as a possible direction for my future career.  Secondly, I had a lot of fun using angular 2 and learning javascript. Lastly but equally important I have learned of some great tools that can aid in development like slack, trello, web pack, and web storm.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Conundrums In Computing by patrickgrahamblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Reflection Sprint 5

Sprint 5 was when the team split. As in split into pairs to tackle the 3 different issues we pulled down. The first was the original button problem, the next was an issue having to do with a colored box that appeared next to patients to show status aka dead/ alive, the last issue was the one that I was working on which had to do with displaying a message when contacts were saved. So kyle found the function called to save the contacts. This already put us to a good start. As a test, we placed a javascript alert into the function to see if it was, in fact, the right function. The test was a success when web pack compiled with our added change the alert box appeared. Alright, this was fine but this alert was not within the web app so we decided it was not the right way to accomplish this. Another way that we approached the fix was to recreate the box that was shown when the edit contact button was clicked. Unforchanatly we did not accomplish this within the sprint and it had to be put on the backlog until the next and final sprint.

At the end of this sprint, we are heading into finals territory and papervile. What I  mean by this is that other classes are starting to assign final projects, papers, and exams. This means we will have less time during our last sprint to actually accomplish a fix for this issue. I hope to push a fix to the product because it will be a very good thing to point to for experience for a future job.

If I were to do this sprint over again I would start working on the issue sooner. This has been an ongoing problem for me throughout college, procrastination.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Conundrums In Computing by patrickgrahamblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 2 Reflection

Like the first week, This week was mostly about setting up and trying things with Angular 2.

First we all made a Trello account. This was quite easy as there was a one step sign up.

Next we all needed to make an OpenMRS id and introduce ourselves on the official form. This was also quite easy. One of the team members (Danny) did happen to get banned from the board very fast. This was probably due to a random occurrence.

  • Check out my awesome post if you want!

Then we set up Trello integration into Slack. This was just a simple command.

  • /trello

Then we installed the WebStorm IDE by Jet Brains. Lucky enough students get a year of some Jet Brain software for free. So that was quite helpful.

  • If you are a student looking for professional development software, but want it free click here.

The last of the tasks was to complete the Angular Tour of Heroes. This was the hardest part of the week. It was a quite fluid tutorial, but I got stuck a few times. I had a difficult time with knowing where to put some code portions and some of the spelling mistakes took far too long to figure out. I greatly appreciate the tutorial the Angular team has produced because it gave a great overview of some great things Angular can do. I went through the tutorial a few times to try and get everything down. I don’t know if I completely understand everything. It is always process to learn a new language and I am defiantly on the right path.

  • If you want to try the tutorial here is a link to it!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Conundrums In Computing by patrickgrahamblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week One Reflections

This week was mostly set up processes. We choose teams with an interesting voting strategy which seemed to work except that someone had dropped the class and there was an odd number of students in the class. Then we chose a team name by having everyone pick a letter and then finding a some what coherent word with those letters.

We then set up a slack for our group. Slack is a group chat room that allows users to post links and information. I have not specifically used slack but I have used discord. Discord is similar to slack but also has a voice chat option. It is a very good way to keep the entire group updated.

Then we learned what we could about the project we would be working with. OpenMRS is a client server application that allows people with little programming knowledge to build medical records. This system is very useful in developing countries and countries without the necessary funding. AMPATH is one of these record systems that is based in Kenya and helps with all kinds of needs. For the OpenMRS Platform they use Spring MVC and Java EE, and for their ORM they use Hibernate. And front end stuff they use Angular 2.

I am excited to learn more about Angular 2 because at my internship there is a group working in Angular 2 and they are doing new things in the industry.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Conundrums In Computing by patrickgrahamblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.