“Study the Classics” pattern is all about starting with the oldest books in your reading pile and understanding them before moving to newer books. In order to understand the things that other people in the Computer Science field, A person should ask about what they don’t understand and where they can read more about the topic. By focusing on and studying the great works in your area of interest, a person can gain a basic understanding of information on that topic and expand their knowledge at to meet the same level as others in the same profession/area. While some books may have outdated information, they might still have some important points and vital information on how things should be treated today. The pattern also talks about how it can also be a bad thing because you follow classics over more pragmatic solutions for problems.
I think there is a lot to be learned from the past since it took a lot more precision to complete even the simplest tasks of today and things like file size/code size was extremely important and coveted as something that could make or break a project. While things like systems, programs, services and so on continue to get more advanced and powerful rules from the past still apply in many cases and because of this we can still learn a great deal of knowledge from past works on areas of computer science. I Knew there would be a need to continue studying and learning in my profession, but I was unaware of to what degree I would need to take it. I feel that this pattern makes sense and helps a person to further their understanding of their area of interest to one of the highest degrees. It allows a person to understand concepts that most people in that industry/field will know and thus opens up the conversation and ability to learn even more. I think they should have also had more of a focus on how you should intermingle both the classics and the modern/pragmatic books because they are both equally important and if you only focus on only one then you are bound to run into some serious issues when faced with a challenge.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tyler Quist’s CS Blog by Tyler Quist and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The second Apprenticeship pattern I would like to discuss is titled “Breakable Toys.” This pattern is based on the idea that experience is built upon failure. Because many software developers work in an environment that does not allow them to fail, they have trouble learning more about development and improving their skills. This pattern encourages developers to work on smaller projects outside of their work environment, giving them a way to experiment and make mistakes without the usual consequences. Creating these “Breakable Toys” allows developers to learn new things about their usual tools while working on enjoyable projects, which helps them gain useful experience that they could not have acquired in their usual work environment.

I chose to share this pattern because of my own experiences working with Breakable Toys. When I was first learning to program in high school, I would always spend time outside of class working on my own projects. My passion for programming was at its height when it was still new to me, as I constantly wanted to learn more about it. Since starting college, however, I have felt that passion gradually fade. Programming became a central focus of my education, especially after transferring to WSU for Computer Science. My fear of failing in my classes caused me to associate programming with stress and anxiety instead of passion and enjoyment. I eventually stopped working on Breakable Toys, as my attention was completely directed towards classwork and I felt that personal projects were a waste of my time.

Reading this pattern has helped me realize how important my Breakable Toys really were. They contributed to my learning far more than any classwork ever has. They allowed me to figure out new skills at my own pace and let me experiment with them without worrying about failure. For example, due to my focus on Game Development, my Toys helped me learn more about programming graphics than my classes have and they helped me understand the basics of how game engines function by programming them myself. This pattern has made me realize that my personal projects were never a waste of time, as they helped me learn new skills quickly and enjoy myself while doing it. Going forward, I hope to get back to working on Breakable Toys outside of my work environment, as I now realize how important they are to my learning.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Computer Science with Kyle Q by kylequad and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I have endured the struggle between craft and art, beauty and functionality. The dream for any project is to master both but most times it is unrealistic that you will have the time to fully master either one without needing maintenance. Since there is no guarantee of the complete fulfillment of either functionality or beauty you must find a common ground. This is not a common ground of what you think should be but a common ground to make the customer or user happy. You can’t go all functionality and present a fugly work, even if it an amazing work of code. Vice versa you cannot pass in a beautiful shell of a Web User Interface with feature that don’t work correctly!

My favorite part of this chapter was the separation between a craft or art and fine art. It’s not about your own expression, it’s about meeting the threshold of what will make your customer happy and developing past that if possible. First you need to create a great but simple work that meets the basic needs and looks presentable, then you may chase functionality or beauty.

Another great point in this reading was that the best way to learn can be fixing mistakes rather than starting over just because you messed up. If you go to far with functionality or beauty and one starts to fail because of the other than you need to stop and find out why. You may learn something that will help you in the future, hone your skills. Refactoring and repairing may be more beneficial for you and the customer.

I know I have experienced this issue in a slightly different scenario. My partner and I were creating a Web User Interface that connected to a database and we had both come up with basic models for the code. Instead of starting a new project from scratch we refactored one of our projects to incorporate the things that worked in the others program. We learned many lessons on functionality and beauty by fixing code rather than restarting. Since our code was a mix up of each others design we had to find out how our web page would change. We ended up going with the best functionality we could get with a little less beauty than we liked. However, it worked great and was up to standards with it’s appearance so the result was a success.

From the blog cs@worcester – Zac's Blog by zloureiro and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

“I enjoy being given a certain amount of freedom in order to interpret or to come up with stuff, but I do enjoy collaboration. I seek and thrive on projects where I am going to learn from the people I’m working with.”

William Kempe

I agree strongly with the author.

Yes, being a software developer is about collaboration. This is how ideas and creation comes in. Even if you know everything about on how to implement the data or any complex function you still need to collaborate with other developers. Who knows that they know an easier way to code the program. Collaboration is a huge part.

It is a learning strategies. The word the author gave is “Pair programing”. It is complex because you are compare and working on same thing but each with different or similar strategy. It will bring motivation and curiosity in learning new techniques.

Basically, It is a way to expose yourself to work along with skilled people and observe how gradually skills are grown for both developers. If you find someone who is as eager as you are in working on the project than make sure to have a good understanding an have talked though about the projects.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tech a Talk -Arisha Khan by ajahan22 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Zac Loureiro

My last final project blog left off with us having a connection established between Java rest api and a SQLite database. We accomplished this through use of Java imports that were available to us. The next step was finding out how to actually access our database with queries that are sent with our backend Java rest api. We started with a simple get method, in the rest api format it is a @GetMapping method. We were just trying to run a query to get all the ‘artists’ in our database, ‘artists’ being music artists is one of the tables in our database. The query in SQLite would be “select * from artists”. There are a series of methods available with the sql imports in Java to help execute this query using the backend. Here is a look at our complete method:

@GetMapping(“/artists”)

public ResponseEntity<Object> getAllArtists() throws SQLException {

   PreparedStatement statement = conn.prepareStatement(“select * from artists”);

   ResultSet rs = statement.executeQuery();

   ArrayList<Map<String, String>> results = new ArrayList<>();

   while (rs.next()) {

       Map<String, String> temp = new HashMap<>();

       temp.put(“ArtistId”, rs.getString(“ArtistId”));

       temp.put(“Name”, rs.getString(“Name”));

       results.add(temp);

   }

   return new ResponseEntity<>(results, HttpStatus.OK);

}

The line @GetMapping(“/artists”) establishes our path for the rest api. The lines PreparedStatement statement = conn.prepareStatement(“select * from artists”); 

and

ResultSet rs = statement.executeQuery();

are available via the sql imports. The first of these two lines creates the query as a variable “statement” of type “PreparedStatement” within our connection. Then a variable “rs” of type “ResultSet” is set equal to “statement.executeQuery()”. This sets “rs” equal to the result of the query, which in this case is all the artists in the database. Then the data of the artists is loaded into an ArrayList of type Map<String, String> and returned. Returning an ArrayList of Maps is best for functionality when we got to working on our front end code. Since artists had two fields “ArtistId” and “Name”, which are both Strings, saved the data in a Map<String, String> so that both variables were easy to access. This way we could pinpoint any artist in the database when we began to search for specific artists. Our next task was to create methods that allowed our users to search for a specific artist by name. We needed to also add a post method to allow users to add an artist to our database.

From the blog cs@worcester – Zac&#039;s Blog by zloureiro and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s post I read through Michael Karén’s article, “Game Development: Tetris in Angular.” As the name suggests, this article demonstrates how to make a Tetris game in Angular. This is a great example project that shows many of Angular’s functionalities without being too complex. It covers topics introduced in CS 343: components and templates, and other topics like styles and event listeners. The author’s project code can be viewed on GitHub for further examination.

The project contains three components (with @Component
decorator): app, board, and piece. The app component is the main component that
uses the board component as a template. The board component handles the board
UI and injects the game logic from GameService. And lastly, the piece component
handles the UI and properties of the Tetris pieces.

Templates are used in two ways in Karén’s game. The app-root
which uses another component as its template by using the custom tag
<game-board></game-board>. The game-board uses a URL as a template,
which is defined in the board component’s HTML file. This HTML file defines how
both game-board and, by extension, app-root are rendered on the page.

The injectable class (with @Injectable decorator)
game.service contains much of the game logic. As an injectable, game.service’s
methods are accessible to board.component when game.service is injected in
board.component, located at the example code’s line 72 with “constructor(private
service: GameService) {}.” This is useful as it is cleaner to separate the responsibility
of the game logic and the UI logic from each other.

The styles are defined in a Cascading Style Sheet or CSS file.
The CSS file is used to define how some of the HTML elements are designed. CSS makes
HTML design simpler with its more intuitive interface.

I learned a new decorator from this article, @HostListener.
This decorator can be used to define the program’s response to user
interaction. In this article’s project uses @HostListener to define how the game
board responds to the specified keystrokes.

The JSON methods stringify and parse were also new to me. JSON.stringify will convert an object into a string. JSON.parse on the other hand, converts a string into a JSON object.

Reading through this article and examining the project’s
code has helped my understanding of Angular and HTML tremendously. I recommend Michael
Karén’s article, “Game Development: Tetris in Angular,” to those who are
looking for a fun example of an Angular program.  Being able to see all the parts of the
program and how they work together has made Angular more accessible for me and
has provided an excellent resource for possible projects in the future.

Article referenced:
https://blog.angularindepth.com/game-development-tetris-in-angular-64ef96ce56f7

From the blog CS@Worcester – D’s Comp Sci Blog by dlivengood and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This past week, I began to work with REST API frontend code
using the Angular framework in CS-343. The introductory class activity taught
the basics about setting up and working with an Angular project as well as some
useful properties of Angular (such as *ngIf) that I definitely see myself using
in the future. However, the activity did not go into much detail about how to
create and manipulate Angular components to create more interesting UIs. While
researching Angular on my own, I came across a blog post from Angular
University titled “Angular Components – The Fundamentals.”

The blog can be found here:

https://blog.angular-university.io/introduction-to-angular-2-fundamentals-of-components-events-properties-and-actions/

As someone who has enjoyed creating UIs in Java using Swing
components, this blog immediately caught my attention. I expected it to help me
create UIs for server-based applications that would be more interesting than
the basic layout I worked with in class. However, while this blog did not go
into too much detail on the creation of UIs, it has certainly helped me to
better understand the fundamental properties of Angular components. The information
I learned from this blog will undoubtedly be useful as I begin to work more
in-depth with Angular components in my final project for CS-343. I decided to
share this blog because I think that others who are new to Angular will also find
it to be a useful introduction to Angular components.

The blog starts by providing a basic introduction to Angular components, as well as browser components in general, using short example code. It then discusses in detail the two main aspects of an angular component, properties and events, and explains when to use them and when to avoid using them. I think the blog did a great job explaining properties and events in simple terms and clearly stating when not to use them. I especially liked how the blog links properties and events to input and output, respectively. This association helped me understand when to make use of properties and events in Angular projects, since I already have experience working with input and output of components in Java. I also think the example code in this blog is simple enough that it can easily be referenced while working on other projects. I certainly see myself referring back to these examples as I start working with Angular components on my own to help myself understand the correct syntax for implementing properties and events. Finally, this blog has demonstrated to me how to create familiar components, such as a scrollable list, and it has taught me how to change aspects of components, such as their color. The information in this blog has helped me understand the fundamentals of Angular components and how to work with them in applications. I will certainly be referring back to this post as I begin to work on my final project this week, as it is a great resource to help new Angular developers to understand Angular components.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Computer Science with Kyle Q by kylequad and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For my final project in my software construction and architecture class, I will be writing a 5-post series for Final Project Learning and Status (FPL&S). This project will be using Angular, Typescript, and Node Package Manager (npm). I am not familiar with these tools, but I have learned my lesson before that one should fully understand the technologies they’re using before they start a project. I have spent about 10 hours this week tinkering with Angular, reading blogs, watching tutorials, and of course referencing Angular documentation, with the goal of understanding the architecture as a whole.

My first question: why did I have to download Node.js? The answer boils down to requiring npm, which is packaged with Node.js. Npm allows users to share packages, and Angular requires quite a few packages to run. Npm takes care of this. Of course, it also installed Angular itself.

I was also confused about which files were doing what in a pre-configured project, but after playing with the code and making modifications, this started becoming second-nature, so I won’t go into detail on that. However, learning the concepts behind each file was much more important.

Traversy Media released an Angular Crash Course video which I found to be quite comprehensive and helpful in understanding the framework as a whole. Many of these concepts were learned in practice, but it is nice to be explicitly told some things to remove doubt. The video described how UI “Components” are used and built. Particularly useful were the descriptions of using a constructor to import services that will be used, and that selector was defining the tag to be used in HTML.

Modules, called NgModules, are another important concept, central to Angular. In a single-page web app you might only have a single NgModule, but in larger systems they help improve the modularity of an application, just as modules in Java or other languages. A single NgModule, however, can have many Components. Components can also be reused and nested, but should be considered a view, the goal of which is to create a user experience.

My final project will tie in with my independent study Android app next semester. My first idea was to implement audio recording that will also be necessary for my mobile app, but this turned into a much bigger challenge than expected. Due to the nature of my mobile app, I feel it will be better to start with a web front-end that can pull from data already stored in a cloud database, in order to display metrics, charts and a summary of results. Learning about Angular Observables will likely help to perform asynchronous uploading.

I’ve learned much more than what I’ve written up here, but this blog post addresses what I feel was most relevant to my project and learning Angular. Since this blog is documenting learning experiences, I welcome comments, corrections, and suggestions if anyone thinks it will help.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Inquiries and Queries by ausausdauer and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Mockito is a mocking framework. In his article Mocks aren’t Stubs, Martin Fowler mentions that Mocks allow for behavior verification, rather than state verification, which verifies values after method calls to confirm the proper behavior occurred. Behavior verification instead makes sure the proper behavior happened, by confirming the proper methods themselves were called.

So mocking is a means of setting expectations of method calls on a mock object, and then verifying that those method calls actually happen. But how does this apply to Mockito?

Mockito is a bit more comprehensive. It has mocks, stubs and spies. It has a lot of methods, and a few different philosophies on how it should be used. Should everything be mocked except the system under test? Should you mock types that you didn’t create? When is partial mocking ok? These are questions that are not simply answered and will likely have answers that evolve over time. But the takeaway is that there is a lot to Mockito.

The best way to learn how Mockito can be used is to look at examples. Mockito’s documentation is a good resource and describes many of the concepts. However, the examples are a bit simple and isolated. A Vogella tutorial on Mockito has many better examples that shows how you can use Mockito in actual production code.

Complicated behavior is where mocking comes in handy. Stubs are great for making sure simple methods are called within objects. But in complicated systems, there is a lot more going on that may affect the behavior of the object under test. A mock object can trick external classes into believing that the Mock object is doing real work, by providing expected return values when a method is called. Furthermore, you cannot always check the state of an object without modifying the class itself, making behavior verification the only means of testing.

Mockito is commonly used in Android mobile app testing, especially when Android was officially using Java. In a mobile environment, you are building an app on top of a complicated framework, and as such you may encounter problems, or at least complications, when trying to test. A common example is the Context object in Android. It provides necessary information about the environment in which code is being run. Android Fragments and Activities might need this context internally, but the behavior of the Fragments and Activities should not depend on the actual Context object. Another issue arises: how do you set up application context in a test environment? With Mockito, these complications are resolved by simply creating a Mock Context object in the test cases. If you rely on return values within a mock object, you can even tell Mockito what it needs to return when methods are called.

Mockito can be used in combination with other test methods, using as many or as few of its features as desired. Mocking is quite possibly a necessity when testing complicated systems, and at the very least powerful and convenient.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Inquiries and Queries by ausausdauer and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I decided to learn more about angular since it peaked my interest in class and in general. in my search for more information on Angular, I found “Introduction to AngularJS” by GeeksForGeeks. This post explains the strengths and important things to know about Angular and some of the key features of Angular. some key points from the post are that its easy to use and requires little understanding of different coding languages like HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Angular saves time as well and avoids unnecessary code. Angular is a powerful framework that allows the developer more control over their applications and web resources. Angular is also unit test ready which helps the developer even more in there processes of creating applications and resources. Angular has Data Binding which means that the developer does not need to continuously update the HTML file or create a special code to bind the data. This keeps data consistent and updated with the most recent version of an application or resource that the developer provides.
Angular seems to make web development easier than ever and gives people the templates and tools needed to create powerful and intuitive applications to suit their own needs. From my short experience with angular, i felt confident and powerful while using the framework and wasted less time than expected had i tried to create a web application without it. I felt in control and could see the real time changes that were occurring in my local website due to the changes I was making. Angular has been for sometime one of the three major frameworks for web developers and the other two are React and Vue. I’m unsure about the other too languages are better or worse or have advantages over Angular, but at this point in time Angular seems like a strong and good choice for my future with any type of web development. the one thing that i think makes angular so appealing to me and others is that the data is bonded and you don’t need to constantly change things to reflect one change in a web application or resource. This framework is something i could see myself using in the future or something like it for web development because it simplifies a larger more difficult job and allows people with enough information to traverse its power and harness that power to create powerful applications. I can’t wait to learn even more about Angular and how to use it effectively.
link to article referenced: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/introduction-to-angularjs/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tyler Quist’s CS Blog by Tyler Quist and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.