Category Archives: CS-343

Sequence diagram dissection

Along with class diagrams is the topic of a sequence diagram (mentioned in previous blogs). Sequence diagrams are a good way to understand the flow of a program that helps developers when it comes to creating and testing their products.

This blog will go into detail of how to read a sequence diagram and show why they are important.

To start here is the example given from a class activity and the previous blog:

As an overview this is the sequence diagram for a program that creates a student and a day. Courses and appointments are assigned to a student, working as a mock schedule creator. The student has a name, phone number and an email address. Days are a collection of courses and events. The courses have a start time, end time, course code and room number. The appointments have a start time, end time and description. Displaying the day shows all of the assigned courses and events.

With the overview we can look into how all of that information is extracted using just the sequence diagram. Ideally you would want a class diagram as well in order to write the program initially but the sequence diagram also helps explain the flow and give an idea of what should be tested.

Starting from the top we have a user, that being the driver class that someone is using to run the program. We begin with creating 2 days and two courses. The courses variables are listed above the line leading to the order of their creation. Next a student is created. This student is named sam and the associated variables are listed in a similar manner. An appointment is created in a similar manner as the courses.

All of the created courses and events are then added to the list of events. A new course is created and added to the events. Then comes the “testing” portion. By displaying the days you should get outputs that show all of the events. After removing the created appointment and displaying the day again you should see it has been removed.

All of this shows the actual behavior a program should have. Along with giving samples of inputs that can be used to test that the program is working as intended.

Below is the code written to match the sequence diagram:

As one can most likely see. The code itself follows the diagram almost perfectly. The main differences are just the syntax and the way certain aspects are implemented. It’s important to check over the class diagram and code itself to know how to properly implement the sequence diagram.

The power of a sequence diagram is that it gives a developer a basic example of a program’s expected behaviors. For actual proper testing you would want to implement more things that wont be discussed here. However it is a strong stepping stone leading towards that.

From the blog Mikes CS 343 by Michael St. Germain and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

An Efficient Way to Work: Software Frameworks

Intro

Frameworks play a pivotal role in streamlining software workflow. The blog post “Top 50+ Software Development Frameworks“ by Trung Tran provides an insightful overview of the purpose, types, and benefits of frameworks, making it an excellent resource for anyone involved in the software development world.

Summary of Source

The blog explains the concept of software development frameworks as pre-built tools and libraries that provide a structure for developing applications. It highlights the following key points:

  1. What is a Software Development Framework: A framework is a pre-designed structure of reusable components and tools that streamlines the software development process.
  2. Advantages of Using a Software Framework: Frameworks enhance efficiency, improve code quality, simplify maintenance, and enable faster development cycles.
  3. Disadvantages of Using a Software Framework: Potential drawbacks include steep learning curves, limited customization, and dependency on the framework’s updates and support.
  4. How to Choose a Suitable Development Framework: Developers should consider project requirements, scalability, compatibility, and their team’s expertise when selecting a framework.
  5. 50+ Popular Software Development Frameworks: The blog lists widely used frameworks like Angular, React, Django, Spring, and Flutter, categorizing them based on application types.

Reason For Choosing This Source

As someone learning to build efficient and maintainable software, understanding frameworks is fundamental. This resource breaks down everything needed to know about frameworks before jumping into using them, even listing the top 50 is really useful to see for any project anyone may do.

Reflection

Prior to this blog I didn’t really have a strong understanding of what a framework for software development was. I had heard of popular ones like ruby on rails or spring for java, but I wasn’t sure what it really meant. Reading through this blog, I now feel I have a solid grasp on what they are, and how to choose one. On the topic of choosing one, there aren’t any that are one size fits all that will always be the perfect one to use, and it more depends on the project being worked on and the team behind it. I know frameworks are popular so I hadn’t considered some the disadvantages listed in the blog like the limited customization, where it might feel like you have less control of what your program does because you’re using this outline and can’t mold it as much as you may want to. A lot of times those disadvantages are overshadowed by the positives which is why they’re so often used.

Future Application

I’ve learned that frameworks are a really powerful tool that save a lot of time and help create efficient work, so I’ll make sure to study which framework is best for me to use in the future when working on projects. This blog post also helped me understand the limitations of them so I also know what to look out for in terms of drawbacks for whichever framework I might use.

Citation

Top 50+ Software Development Frameworks by Trung Tran https://www.orientsoftware.com/blog/software-development-frameworks/

From the blog CS@Worcester – The Science of Computation by Adam Jacher and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Deep Dive: UML Diagrams

This week I’m again back at my favorite site, GeeksForGeeks. For everything I learned about in class, there’s always something GeeksForGeeks can teach me. Unified Modelling Language (UML) is just how it sounds, a language for modelling a system. It is a multi-faceted tool and in class we learned about class and sequence diagrams. What I was happy to learn however is that these two examples of UML can be separated into two categories, Structural UML Diagrams and Behavioral UML Diagrams.

Quick note: I will be summarizing this article as someone who knows what UML class and sequence diagrams are. If you do not know what these are then I would read the article yourself to get to the same starting point.

The article starts with a brief summary of what UML is before hopping into the categories of diagrams and plethora of examples of each. First up is Structural Diagrams and they include the class diagrams most people have seen, composite structure diagrams that show more detail for the individual parts, object diagrams which model how instantiated class objects interact with one another in the system, and component diagrams show how the physical pieces of a system are laid out. They are followed by the deployment diagrams visualizing all the pieces of hardware with their corresponding piece of software components and to wrap this category up we have the package diagrams to show us dependencies and internal composition of, you guessed it, our packages.

Next up is the Behavioral Diagrams, categorically separated into state machine diagrams that models a classes change over time or results from an external stimulus, activity diagrams which are reminiscent of flow charts in their depiction of the various states of a system, and use case diagrams showing the requirements for a system to properly interact with the users (known as external agents). Next up is the good old sequence diagrams, followed by communication diagrams which show similar information to sequence diagrams but in a more ‘free form’. This leads into timing diagrams that are again, similar to sequence diagram except now they are showing the constraints on time and duration. And finally we see interaction overview diagrams which are just a high-level overview of the interaction within the system.

After these types of UML diagrams Geeks For Geeks has a refresher for the OOP principles in UML that then rolls into some of the tools used to make these diagrams as well as the steps to make them, best practices, use case for these diagrams, how they fit into the Agile development mentality, some of the common challenges in regards to making UML diagrams and finally some of their myriad of benefits.

Almost needless to say, I now have a bookmark to this article and will be giving some of the listed tools a spin once I have the time. I expect this knowledge to help me in mentally visualizing a system so I can better address any problems that arise.

Link:
https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/unified-modeling-language-uml-introduction/#3-types-of-uml-diagrams

From the blog CS@Worcester – Coder's First Steps by amoulton2 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Computer Programming and My Future

Hello Debug Ducker here, and this one is going to be a lot less focus. As I near the end of my college fall semester, I come to realize that I am nearing completion of college, and will hopefully come out with a bachelors degree in Computer Science. With this in mind I did some reflecting about my choice in the field and how have my classes helped me.

For this semester, I did a CS course called Software Construction, Design and Architecture. To best describe it, its like applying the fundamentals of computer science, while understanding new techniques to build better software . I remember at the beginning we review some CS concepts such as Polymorphism, Abstraction Inheritance, and Encapsulation, and when studying it I was surprise to see I was still familiar with the subjects. Even funny that I recently applied for an internship with a company that had me do a test involving those subjects It made me feel more confident with my abilities. Also with the way the class was setup I was a lot more engage with the subjects.

I also learn some new things that involve CS such as UML class diagrams that basically meant to outline the program class structure. Here is an example that I did for class assignment

This was meant for some appointment application, I just did a diagram of it. I can see this being helpful in the field to help people understand what exactly going on with classes if they are new to a project.

I also learn about API work and I am not exactly clear on how it all works but I say I understood a little. I relearn the HTTP methods during that time, which I needed cause it has been a while since I had experience with them. Funny, that one of the HTTP method names is just GET, which just gets you information from a database. Anyway I hope to return trying API so I can get a better grasp on it.

That is a review on the class work but about my efforts. I say I did quite well despite some difficulties. Some unexpected hurdles came but I was able to jump over them to the other side and learn some new skill as a result. Though time waits for nobody and I may have missed some things but hopefully that could be mended.

Now that I am typing these I would like to use to blog for other purposes in the future but we’ll see. Have a nice a holiday and thank you for your time.

From the blog Debug Duck by debugducker and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Singleton & Desing’s Patterns

12/19/2024

At the start of the semester, we were introduced to Design patterns. These techniques include anything from completely restarting a project to erasing redundancy such as repetition of code. Our biggest focus was to use overrides ONLY where needed and it was our job to figure that out because there were certain methods that did need to be overridden.

We worked on a Duck Simulator that has methods for each duck itself, but some ducks needed functions to be overridden were as some didn’t need them for example a decoy duck does not fly. Whereas a mallard duck does therefore there is no need to override a function for that decoy duck. This design pattern is very easy to overuse specially for people not introduced to these types of problems.

The interesting part of this homework was also using the previously covered topic of UML diagrams. This homework though was more about reading and understanding but the main point was to transfer it to Java code. This was a nice intertwining moment because it makes it easier in the future to understand not just the UML but also the design patterns taught.

We created two different interfaces for the Duck Simulator which one was a Quack() and the other was Fly(). These made it so we as the developer do not have to keep overriding. Hence, we end up with a bit more files, but it saves us the trouble in the future if we needed to edit let’s say the decoy duck to fly. Now we are able to go into one file and edit without having affected any other files. Which in larger systems can become a big issue because now the developer has to go into every single file that uses said method which waste time and can be missed if multiple people are working on it at the same time.

We also learned about the singleton method which just retrieves a single instance of an object and if it is not there then it creates it does not use multiple of the same object. There is one down side I read about in the source and it was about unit testing. The source talks about many unit testing frameworks that rely on inheritance when producing a mock object which is a problem because the singleton class is private, and static methods cannot be overridden. Overall, it is still applicable, and we used it in the intermediate part of the design patterns homework to learn how it worked better to always only have one instance of a method.

Source: Design Patterns in Java

From the blog CS@Worcester – Cinnamon Codes by CinnamonCodes and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Working as a Front end developer

Now that I have heard about people’s experiences working on the back end, I was curious about people’s experiences working on the front end. Reading personal experiences taught me a lot about working on the back end. You can learn a lot and avoid mistakes by seeing others take similar paths. Also, it can prepare you for problems that you may face in the future. Mistakes are inevitable but being able to adapt or being able to recognize it and fix it goes a long way. Working on projects especially those that have to do with coding errors is always a step away. You can try to get a step ahead on these problems by seeing other people work and implementing it on your stuff. That is why I found an article about working as a front-end developer. These articles are very engaging and always give me a new perspective.

This article is written by Selim Enes who has done freelance work in the past but is currently working as a developer. When he first started he was working on small things like CSS edits until he proved himself. One of his major projects was a blog project where he had to create the display of the UI. He was involved in all operations after 2 months. When he proved to the team that his code wouldn’t crash the project he gained access to the company’s main project. The company’s main project entailed a webinar application that used technologies like WebSocket. One thing that made him know he was going in the right direction was being able to develop features like push-to-talk by himself. There are some negatives to his work with his boss being very hasty on projects. He believes all tasks are urgent and make some work very stressful. Plus with the recent economic regression, he doesn’t believe he will be able to get a raise anytime soon. He has learned to have a full-stack blog project for himself and has an e-commerce project his about to start working on. He is working while also building his portfolio outside of work.

Reading this article was very insightful. It made sense that when you first start working for a company they won’t give you the keys to everything just yet. They ease you up into it until you have gained their trust. Working on his portfolio outside of work motivated me to do the same too. You can sometimes become complacent at your job because you have a living but you shouldn’t. You should always try to improve and hope to find better opportunities elsewhere

View at Medium.com
https://medium.com/@sellimenes/1-year-experience-as-a-junior-front-end-developer-39766fad5c34

From the blog CS@Worcester – DCO by dcastillo360 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

What is up with Error Codes for HTTP Methods

Photo by Vie Studio on Pexels.com

Hello Debug Ducker here, and I have a question. I am sure you are familiar with a 404 error code, as you may have run into it while surfing the web. 404 Not Found means that the server on the other end couldn’t find what it was looking for, and this is cause the URL is not recognized. This can happen when the webpage is no longer available and you tried connecting to it. 404 is quite the common error, that I believe many have seen at least once but would you be able to tell me what other errors you may have encountered in the web, there is quite a few and some obscures ones you may have never seen.

Perhaps you also wondered why 404 is even an error number, why the number is the way it is, why use those specific numbers. Well you see 4xx is specifically for client errors, which means they are errors on your end and not the server. If a server would to have an error than it would use 5xx instead. For example, there is the 500 error code that is an internal server error which just means something messed up in the server and sent you that as a response. Basically each response code are in different categories, with the error categories coming entirely from 4xx and 5xx.

Now here are ones you know and some obscure ones

400: Bad Request, as in the server could not process the request, either because of a syntax error such as misspelling something

402: Payment Required, says what is on the tin you need to pay, not often used

409: Conflict, the request conflicts with something within the server

414: The URI too long, the URI is long and the server is not willing to handle it

418: I’m a teapot…yeah I don’t understand this one, and yes this is real

There are many of these errors code for 4xx and I would recommend you check it out with the link below.

There are also some 500 server errors, that are interesting such as

501: Not Implemented, as in the request has not been implemented, so exactly what it says

503: Service is Unavailable, just means the server are down.

And Many More.

Thre are a fascinating amount of error codes for some interesting stuff and I reccomend you see a bunch in the link below.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status

Anyway have a nice error free day day.

MozDevNet. “HTTP Response Status Codes – HTTP: MDN.” MDN Web Docs, developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Status.

“HTTP Status Codes: All 63 Explained – Including FAQ & Video.” Umbraco, umbraco.com/knowledge-base/http-status-codes/#http-status-code-categories.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Debug Duck by debugducker and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The UML Family Tree

12/18/2024

At the beginning of the semester, we started to work with UML diagrams. We talked about the different types of diagrams and how each is written in plantuml. We started with UML class diagrams which show each files relationship to one another. It also shows the multiplicities which is important to know when, for example making an appointment. For example, only one person can have multiple appointments, but not multiple people can have the same appointment.

We also learned about Sequence UML diagrams which look different but have the same idea behind them. This type of diagram shows the method and its parameters in a sequence, hence the name. It shows how each class will be used whereas the class UML diagram just shows what the method name is and what the parameters for that specified method are as well.

The sequence UML shows the overall order of things whereas the class UML shows the general method and parameters that will be used. Both diagrams could be used on their own but help a lot more to be organized when used together. UML is very important to be able to visualize code without having to read over every single line trying to understand it all. It helps especially if working in larger groups for everyone to understand. There is another type of diagram that we didn’t talk about but is used a lot which is” use case diagram”. This diagram shows functional requirements, for example someone shops and the diagram show the possible actions the user can make. Such as view items or purchase more, but then behind those actions are more possible actions that can be taken like checkout or just cancel purchase. There is also activity diagrams that need to fill in a condition whether the use input the number in the right format or not. If the user did not then it throws an error, but this is all a visual representation of what the code is supposed to look like and be as well.

 UML diagrams have taught me to be organized in my own coding projects with visualizing my functions and the parameters I will be using. It also organizes file management when using the class UML diagram along with showing multiplicities. Even using other UML diagrams that can organize different parts of the same code and show how it will be used for example combining the class and sequence UML diagrams is a great way to use both for not just visualization but also organizing it all for a final product.

Source: Unified Modeling Language (UML) Diagrams – GeeksforGeeks

From the blog CS@Worcester – Cinnamon Codes by CinnamonCodes and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 15

Working inside the backend made me curious about people’s real-life experiences working in their company’s backend. I found articles about the backend but have yet to gain experience working inside it. It would be helpful to get insight into someone’s real-life experiences. By seeing others’ experiences you can learn from them and avoid any mistakes they made starting. Many beginner mistakes are big headaches when they happen, but if someone else can stop you from making them, it will be a huge lifesaver. We learn sometimes the hard way but the biggest help to prevent this is to learn from other paths. Some may think it better to go in blind I think differently. Being prepared for me is always the better option

Blessings James starts the article by advising readers that starting it may be difficult but to trust the process because the feeling after you accomplish your task is another feeling entirely. Her favorite project was working on a to-do list application with a backend using Python. It was difficult for her to work while also being data efficient. By doing research she was able to find a scalable model that worked. She also discovered some libraries including Flask-login that would do a lot of the heavy lifting. This was key for security which is often overlooked. Debugging is always a problem that comes up but she was able to gracefully fix them. API design was also a key feature wired on but swagger made it a lot easier. 

Reading this article gave me a lot of insight into someone working in the backend for a real company. There were some similarities to what were doing now including swagger. Swagger seems like the for the API design. We haven’t used all the features of Swagger but using Swagger Preview did help when doing assignments and homework. Our code was automatically able to be seen updated. One thing that interested me was Flask-login. I didn’t know you could use outside libraries but it makes sense if it is open to the public anyone can use it. It can save time by being able to use different libraries and cut your workload by half. Reading that article there was a big emphasis on security and I feel at times is overlooked. You have seen with a lot of companies when it is overlooked the outcomes are drastic. It becoming a bigger issue every day and security should be the first task on everyone’s list.

View at Medium.com
View at Medium.com
View at Medium.com
article
View at Medium.com
View at Medium.com
https://medium.com/@blessingjames1047/an-article-on-backend-ff90312c05b2

From the blog CS@Worcester – DCO by dcastillo360 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Future Of Technical Writing

In this podcast episode from Stack Overflow by Ben Popper with special guest Ryan Donovan, discusses the evolution of documentation and the future of technical writing. The whole episode is about the nature of writing documentation is changing fast. With the advent of generative AI and other tools like linters that can automatically write or run tests make technical writing more automated now more than ever. One of the first talking points is why documentation is being pushed a lot more now. Increasingly because programmers don’t like writing documentation this job is delegated to technical writers. Who will go into code repositories and write documentation.These technical writers end up being some of the most important people when it comes to code structure. Since they write the documentation that defines how the program is specified and built. 

After moving through some background information the next talking point is the future of technical writing. This was of the most interesting parts to me because it discusses not only just the AI aspect, but things like how other tools play a role. The question then becomes will AI replace technical writers? The answer they concluded was no. Although it is able to generate and automate documentation. Often that documentation needs to be looked over. For the moment AI is not able to create fully functioning documentation to that level yet.

I chose this podcast because it directly relates to what we have been doing in class lately. Looking at the Open API yaml and documentation related files. I don’t think there is a specific lesson to be learned from this podcast. More about just thinking about the future of technical writing. As programmers, we will all have to interact with documentation at some point. Whether that be something like java docs or yaml files. I think it’s important to know what goes into making documentation and the people who write. Because it really is a career all in of itself. Like I mentioned before, one of the most interesting aspects of technical writing is how AI is changing the landscape. Like many areas right now, people are worried if their jobs are in danger. I think with a lot of other cases human supervision is still needed. Another point that I didn’t really think about before now is the importance of documentation other than just information. Like in the case of yaml files that define structure. Is how important it is because it literally specifies how software operates. Like the definitions of endpoints that must be fulfilled and other specifications.

Citations

https://the-stack-overflow-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes/your-docs-are-your-infrastructure/transcript

From the blog CS@Worcester – Code Craft by Kyle Tucker and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.