As my journey to find my very first internship as a software developer. I’ve noticed that the majority of the posts require Docker’s experience. From there, I realized that Docker is an essential tool for Software Developers and their professional careers. This blog is about Docker of what it is and also why it is necessary nowadays.

Docker is a container running time. A container is a standard unit of software that packs up codes and all their dependencies so the applicant might run quickly and reliably from one computing environment to another. Docker container is a lightweight, standalone, executable package of software that includes everything needed to run an application: code, runtime, system tools, system libraries, and settings

The good thing about Docker is it helps developers get their application to work on every machine. Also, the abundant app’s libraries and dependencies ready to be executed make Docker even better compares to its same category competitive. Besides that, Docker is lightfast and also very easy to maintain.

Also, running applications in a container brings many benefits to both developers such as:

• Portability: Once developers run their containerized application on their machines they also would be able to deploy it to other operations and be assured that their applications would perform the same as on their own.
• Performance: VMs are alternative methods for developers but Docker offers much more compared to regular VMs as faster to deploy, quicker to start, and smaller footprint than ordinary VMs
• Agility: Containers offer portability and performance help reducing time-consuming and make the process responsive and agile. Such advantages provide a better way to deliver the right software at the right time.
• Isolation: A Docker container that contains one of the applications also includes the relevant versions of any supporting software that the developer’s application requires. If other Docker containers have different versions of the same supporting software, that is not a problem because Docker containers are independent.

Most uses of Docker make developer life simply better while developing applications. But it does not mean that Docker could entirely replace the actual Virtual Machine. VMs are still much needed if we have to have a whole operating system for each customer or the entire sandbox. VMs are still being used as middle layers when you have a big server framework and many customers that using them. Despite many good things that Docker could bring to developers, VMs still has a firm grip within the industry and development cycle.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Nin by hpnguyen27 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Michael Feathers is a software developer, founder, and director of R7K Research & Conveyance. R7K Research & Conveyance is a company located in Miami Florida. Specializing in software design, they use the importance of the need of the business and intensive planning to meet company demands, plus on top of that to be able to design software where you are aware of the code to make adaptable adjustments in the long run such as, adding new features that are newly needed vs features that are easily removed to make room for new upcoming changes which is referred to as planning. 

He helps other teams and developers to refactor code to improve its performance without rewriting the existing code. Gives best practices to maintain their software with ease such as making test programs as you can optimize it at the same time to keep tabs on it. 

I chose this blog because he provides helpful tips whether they are in Java, Python, C++, etc. and leaks information from his Book “Legacy Code”. Also mentions UML which I could learn more in depth of when we progress further into CS-343. 

In one of his blogs about code refactoring, he discusses that before we make tests for our own code we write, we must evaluate and rethink towards ourselves whether if it is going to fail. He stated, “As you make any change, know with every edit whether that edit changes behavior.” https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com/testing-yourself, meaning we can’t compile code if it is incomplete, if there is something going wrong, we must figure out the missing piece of the puzzle. I could’ve used this type of thinking back in my other core classes like Data structures, or intro to programming class, because it can only take a small mistake to make your entire code and/or program to fail. Another reason is that Michael gives an example about when working in groups, and the type of challenges you may face such as having trouble putting heads together, not seeing each other’s perspectives. Providing tips and trick to get around obstacles like these. In CS-343, we do POGIL activities when we come into class, each member has roles of their own to keep the teamwork intact, but as he exemplified before we may also “glitch” and we have to figure out why and what can do about it. Depending on how we think and how we get ideas.

Reference blog resource: https://michaelfeathers.silvrback.com , https://www.r7krecon.com

From the blog cs@worcester – Dahwal Dev by Dahwal Charles and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

APIs play an integral role in the development of modern-day applications. Whether you are writing your API or integrating someone else’s, it is crucial to understand their functioning. There are many APIs, but the most common types are REST APIs that operate using HTTP and HTTPS. I chose to write about REST APIs because we will be working with them in this class. They are essential to understand for most development projects. The blog post “Best practices for REST API design” discusses the basics of a REST API, how they work, and development practices. The post also provides code examples using NodeJS with the ExpressJS library showing how the concept of a REST API is implemented.

According to the article, a REST API follows a set of standard design principles that allow users to quickly be able to work with the API. For example, a REST API should include method endpoints such as /GET /POST /PUT and /DELETE. These endpoints are used to send and receive data between the server and the client. The difference between the endpoints is the operations they perform. Sending a request to a GET endpoint will send the client data, a POST request will add data, and a DELETE request will remove data.

Although there are a set of rules a REST API must follow, there are many best practices left up to the developer that they should follow. For example, a REST API should send and receive data in JSON. JSON makes working with data simpler because it is in an easily transferable and structured format. The API should also run over HTTPS rather than HTTP to add an extra level of security between communication.

A REST API closely resembles the structure of a URL where each method is separated by a forward slash. To pass a parameter, a question mark is used followed by the variable name equal to a value. In order to be readable, the developer must name and structure the API paths wisely, based on the function an endpoint is responsible for. For example, a GET request to find a user by ID could look something like /user/findOne?id=120. In this example, the findOne method is prefaced by /user/, and we know the user id we are finding is 120. If the API replaced the word user for record, then the developer using the API would not know what type of data to receive in the request.

Finally, a REST API should be versioned, meaning the highest level path of the URL structure should be the API’s version number. Using the find user example, a versioned API would read /v1/user/findOne?id=120. If we made a change to our API, we could modify that in the v2 API without breaking the code written using the v1 API.

I will definitely use these tips while developing a REST API in the future. One of the most important guidelines I learned was to always send and receive data in JSON. In the past, I have made a REST endpoint return a single value such as a number. Without any context, the data from the API would be hard to understand. If the values were named in JSON then it would be easier to work with and manipulate.

Reference blog resource: stackoverflow.blog/2020/03/02/best-practices-for-rest-api-design

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

Hello and welcome back to my blog! I had a really fun time during the first few weeks of the semester and I am looking forward to the rest of it. The first POGIL group activity we did caught me off guard since I did not remember what the terms abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance meant. These concepts were taught in one of the earlier programming classes and I have done school projects and labs that involved these concepts in the past. But I don’t actually remember the terms or the clear cut definitions of them. Maybe part of the reason why I did not remember them is because we briefly went over those topics and we were also not forced to remember them since those classes were more about if you could write the code correctly. So that is why I decided to focus my blog around those four concepts. The in-class activity was a good refresher but I wanted to do research to fully have a firm understanding of them. Having a strong understanding of these concepts will help me later on in my computer science journey since these concepts are going to be seen over and over again in object orientated programming.

Let’s start with abstraction. Abstraction is basically hiding unnecessary details and leaving only the necessary and relevant details. Hiding unnecessary information is useful because, well, it is not needed to show that information to the user. An example in real life is your smart phone. All that’s important to the user is the screen and they do not need to know what processor or how much RAM the phone has.

Encapsulation is bundling data with the code that modifies the data and it can also prevent outside sources from accessing that data. In Java, encapsulation is used in classes where data can be declared as private and outside methods cannot access that data.

Polymorphism is the ability to take on many forms. In Java, that means you can perform one tank many ways. An example of that is calculating the area of a shape. You can use the same method area() to calculate the area of a triangle, octagon, or any other shape. There’s also overriding methods where the child class has the same method as the parent class.

Inheritance is gaining the properties of one class to another class. It’s like a parent-child relationship. In Java, a child class inherits all the methods and attributes from its parent class. The vehicle example is a really good one. Vehicle would be the parent class and car and truck would be the child classes. Both car and truck would share the same attributes from vehicle but also have their own attributes as well.

This has been a good review for me and the website really helped me understand what the four OOP concepts are. In the future I hope to apply all of these concepts into my work.

Site used: https://www.nerd.vision/post/polymorphism-encapsulation-data-abstraction-and-inheritance-in-object-oriented-programming

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello and welcome back to my blog! I had a really fun time during the first few weeks of the semester and I am looking forward to the rest of it. The first POGIL group activity we did caught me off guard since I did not remember what the terms abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance meant. These concepts were taught in one of the earlier programming classes and I have done school projects and labs that involved these concepts in the past. But I don’t actually remember the terms or the clear cut definitions of them. Maybe part of the reason why I did not remember them is because we briefly went over those topics and we were also not forced to remember them since those classes were more about if you could write the code correctly. So that is why I decided to focus my blog around those four concepts. The in-class activity was a good refresher but I wanted to do research to fully have a firm understanding of them. Having a strong understanding of these concepts will help me later on in my computer science journey since these concepts are going to be seen over and over again in object orientated programming.

Let’s start with abstraction. Abstraction is basically hiding unnecessary details and leaving only the necessary and relevant details. Hiding unnecessary information is useful because, well, it is not needed to show that information to the user. An example in real life is your smart phone. All that’s important to the user is the screen and they do not need to know what processor or how much RAM the phone has.

Encapsulation is bundling data with the code that modifies the data and it can also prevent outside sources from accessing that data. In Java, encapsulation is used in classes where data can be declared as private and outside methods cannot access that data.

Polymorphism is the ability to take on many forms. In Java, that means you can perform one tank many ways. An example of that is calculating the area of a shape. You can use the same method area() to calculate the area of a triangle, octagon, or any other shape. There’s also overriding methods where the child class has the same method as the parent class.

Inheritance is gaining the properties of one class to another class. It’s like a parent-child relationship. In Java, a child class inherits all the methods and attributes from its parent class. The vehicle example is a really good one. Vehicle would be the parent class and car and truck would be the child classes. Both car and truck would share the same attributes from vehicle but also have their own attributes as well.

This has been a good review for me and the website really helped me understand what the four OOP concepts are. In the future I hope to apply all of these concepts into my work.

Site used: https://www.nerd.vision/post/polymorphism-encapsulation-data-abstraction-and-inheritance-in-object-oriented-programming

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.