When you work in a codespace, the environment you are working in is created using a development container, or dev container, hosted on a virtual machine.

Dev Containers are Docker containers that are specifically configured to provide a fully featured development environment. They are a crucial part of our course material, and this blog post will explore their significance and functionality.

Summary of Dev Containers

Dev Containers are isolated development environments created in virtual machines, ensuring a consistent setup for everyone working on a project. They can be customized to match the specific requirements of a repository, enabling the inclusion of frameworks, tools, extensions, and port forwarding.

Why Dev Containers Matter

The reason for selecting Dev Containers as our topic is simple: they are a game-changer for modern software development. With write permissions to a repository, you can create or edit the codespace configuration, allowing teams to work in a tailored environment. They eliminate the “it works on my machine” problem, providing a consistent, reproducible setup for all team members.

Reflection on Dev Containers

As I delved into this topic, I was particularly struck by the flexibility and versatility of Dev Containers. The ability to create custom configurations, use predefined setups, or rely on default configurations makes it adaptable to various scenarios. It’s not just about convenience; it’s about ensuring that development environments are well-structured and efficient.

What I Learned

One key takeaway from studying Dev Containers is the importance of clear and standardized development environments. This is especially vital in large repositories that contain code in different programming languages or for various projects. It’s not just about having the right tools; it’s about having them consistently available to every team member.

The use of Dockerfiles, referenced in the devcontainer.json file, is another fascinating aspect. Dockerfiles allow you to specify the steps needed to create a Docker container image, making it easy to reproduce your development environment.

Applying What I Learned

In my future practice, I plan to leverage Dev Containers in collaborative projects. The ability to define a single dev container configuration for a repository or multiple configurations for different branches or teams is a feature I intend to use strategically. By tailoring development environments to the specific needs of a project, I aim to improve productivity and ensure that every team member has the tools they require.

Resource Link

Introduction to Dev Containers

In conclusion, Dev Containers are a powerful tool in modern software development, ensuring consistency, efficiency, and collaboration within development teams. By understanding how to create, customize, and apply Dev Containers, we can take our projects to the next level and tackle complex coding challenges more effectively. This topic directly relates to our course material, offering practical knowledge that can be applied in real-world scenarios.

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.

API, or application programming interface, is a set of specifications that allow applications to interact with one another. They enable transfer of information and is treated as an intermediary level let companies open their application data to external third-party developers as well as internal departments within the company. An example of how APIs work is third-party payment processing. For instance, when making a payment online and being given an option to “Pay with PayPal”, the connection made between the third-party payment system and the website where the payment is being made is reliant on APIs. When selecting the option, an API calls to retrieve information or request. After processing the request from the application to the web server, the API makes a call to the external program/web server. In this situation, it would be the third-party payment system. The external system then sends the requested information back through the API to transfer to the initial requesting web server.

REST is a set of design principles and stands for “representational state transfer” architectural style. Sometimes referred to as RESTful APIs, they were first defined in 2000 by Dr. Roy Fielding and provides more flexibility and freedom for developers. They can support many different data formats and are required to follow the 6 principles, also known as architectural constraints. The six principles are the following: uniform interface, client-server decoupling, statelessness, cacheability, layered system architecture, and code on demand (optional).

Uniform interface means that all API requests from the same resource should have identical formats to ensure that a piece of data belongs to only one uniform resource identifier (URI). The resource should not be too large while still containing the information the client needs. Client and server applications must be completely independent of each other in REST API design. The client application only needs to know the URI of the requested resource and cannot interact with the server in any other ways. Statelessness means that each request needs to include all the information necessary for processing it, which means REST APIs do not require any server-side sessions. Resources should be cacheable on the client or server side and the server responses should contain the needed information about whether caching is allowed for the delivered resource. The purpose of this is to improve performance on the client side while also increasing scalability on the server side. REST APIs have different layers to them that calls and responses go through. To note, do not always assume the client and server applications connect directly to each other. These APIs need to be designed so that neither the client nor the server can tell whether it communicates with an intermediary or end application. In certain cases, responses can contain executable code when they usually send static resources. In the case that an executable code is added (such as Java applets), the code should only run on-demand.

What is a REST API? | IBM

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.

As a computer science student, my recent deep dive into REST filters and queries has been an exciting journey, and I’m eager to share my newfound knowledge on my blog. This educational adventure has been made all the more engaging by drawing inspiration from a renowned source, “The Web Developer’s Guide to REST APIs,” an authoritative guide known for its in-depth insights. By harnessing the capabilities of REST filters and queries, I can adeptly extract, manipulate, and interpret data from various real-world APIs, offering invaluable insights for my web development endeavors.

The power of REST filters and queries becomes abundantly clear when applied to an API or database. These tools empower me to refine, categorize, sort, and arrange data with utmost precision. A simple yet potent filter allows me to isolate a specific subset of data, such as products falling within the “Beverages” category, using a query like: /products?filter=category eq 'Beverages'. This not only trims down the dataset returned but also permits a laser focus on the data that is most pertinent to my objectives. Furthermore, I can apply the $orderby parameter to arrange the results in ascending or descending order, perhaps alphabetically or by price, for a comprehensive understanding of the data landscape. This degree of command over data proves instrumental, especially when dealing with voluminous datasets in real-world applications.

REST queries, in addition to their filtering and sorting prowess, offer the capability to conduct intricate data operations. Consider, for instance, the need to identify the top 5 customers who have placed the highest number of orders. By adroitly combining the $filter and $orderby parameters, I can craft a query like: /customers?$filter=orderCount gt 0&$orderby=orderCount desc&$top=5. This flexible and nuanced data manipulation capacity is a linchpin in my decision-making process as a developer and is a skill set crucial for me to master. Consequently, anticipate an insightful journey as I delve deeper into the realms of REST filters and queries, leveraging the wisdom from “The Web Developer’s Guide to REST APIs,” to enhance my data manipulation expertise.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Andres Ovalles by ergonutt and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Refactoring is the process of restructuring a code without changing or adding to its functionality and external behavior. There are a lot of ways to go about refactoring but it mostly goes towards applying standard basic actions. These changes in the existing code save the software’s functionality and behavior since the changes are so tiny, they are less likely to cause any errors. So, what is the point of refactoring? Well, refactoring is to turn any messy confusing code into a clean understandable one instead. When a code is messy it means that the code is hard to understand and maintain, when it’s time to add a required functionality it causes a lot of problems with the code because it’s confusing already. With a clean code, it’s easier to make any changes and improve on any problems. Also with a clean code anybody who ever works with the code is able to understand the code and can appreciate how organized it is. When a messy code isn’t cleaned up it can affect any feature developments because developers have to take more time to understand the code and track the code so that they can make any changes themselves.

Knowing when to refactor is important and there are different times to refactor your code. Like refactoring, while you’re reviewing the code, reviewing the code before it goes live is the best time to refactor and make any changes you can before pushing it through. You can also schedule certain parts of your day to refactor your code instead of doing it all at once. By cleaning your code you are able to catch any bugs before they create any problems in your code. The main thing about refactoring your code is that cleaning up a dirty code can reduce technical debt. Clean code is easier to read and if anybody else besides the developer works on that code they are also able to easily understand that code as well as maintain and add features to it. The less complicated the code is, it can lead to improved source-code maintenance. With a clean code, the design can be used as a tool for any other developers it can become the basis of a code elsewhere. This is why I believe that refactoring is important because changing just the smallest piece of code can lead to a better functional approach to programming. It helps developers get a better understanding of the code as well as making better design decisions.

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.

This week, I wanted to continue writing about the SOLID software design principles. The next principle I have to cover is the Liskov substitution principle. This principle expands upon the Open/Closed principle I wrote about the previous week, providing a guideline on how a superclass and its child classes should behave.

This principle was first defined by Barbara Liskov in 1987, and later adopted by Robert C. Martin. From a paper that Barbara Liskov cowrote with Jeanette Wing, they defined the Liskov substitution principle as a mathematical property: “Let Φ(x) be a property provable about objects x of type T. Then Φ(y) should be true for objects y of type S where S is a subtype of T.”

Translated into plain English, this principle states that instances of a superclass in a program should be able to be replaced by one of its subclasses without breaking the program. Overridden methods from a subclass must accept the same input as the superclass’s original method, and the return value of a subclass’s method must be able to be used the same way as the value returned by a superclass’s original method.

Creating code that abides by this principle isn’t simple, as the compiler can only verify that the structure of your code is correct, not that any specific behavior of your code always executes when desired. Creating robust test classes and cases is the best way to check if your code is following the Liskov substitution principle, checking portions of your program using all subclasses of a particular component to ensure there are no resulting errors or loss in performance.

The author of this article series has included another code example representing a coffee machine to illustrate this design principle, as they have done in their previous articles. They present the problem of creating different subclasses of coffee machines from a generic parent class, with two classes with an “addCoffee()” method that accepts two different types of objects, CoffeeBean and GroundCoffee. The author suggests two solutions, either creating a common Coffee class that can be utilized by both the BasicCoffeeMachine class and the PremiumCoffeeMachine class, or create a common implementation of a “brewCoffee()” method that also appears in both CoffeeMachine classes. The first solution would violate the Liskov substitution principle, because each CoffeeMachine class would need to validate that they are receiving the correct input type for the addCoffee() method, as the BasicCoffeeMachine class can only use the GroundCoffee type, and not the CoffeeBean type. The author’s preferred solution is to remove the addCoffee() method from both CoffeeMachine classes and implement a common brewCoffee() method in the CoffeeMachine interface implemented by BasicCoffeeMachine and PremiumCoffeeMachine. Since all CoffeeMachines are expected to brew filtered coffee grounds, this brewCoffee() method should have that responsibility.

I want to further understand this principle because in a past project, I made a simple video game that used lots of objects of different subtypes that inherited from a single GameObject parent class. If I want to return to that project, or begin a similar one in the future, I want to make sure that I am not losing any functionality as I design and implement subclasses of a broader parent class.

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

SOLID Design Principles

SOLID is a subcategory of five principles, the first being:

Single Responsibility Principle (SRP)

SRP states that a class, module, or function should only have a singular function.

For example, having a class ‘Animal’ with methods ‘displayAnimalName()’, ‘animalSound()’, ‘feedAnimal()’ would be a violation of SRP because each method has a different function. Creating three separate classes that would each represent a functionality resolves the violation. This entails new classes are created for DisplayName, Sound, and Feeding. Although this may lead to more code overall, having separate classes allows for better maintainability. Without SRP, making changes to one functionality may break another.

Open-Closed Principle (OCP)

OCP states that code should be open for extension, but closed for modification. Therefore the code’s behavior should be extended by adding more code rather than modifying the existing code.

Function ‘getArea()’ calculates the area of a shape using a switch statement where there are cases for a square and circle. To add another shape, the switch statement must be modified to add a case for the new shape, violating OCP. To satisfy OCP, one would create separate classes for each shape that implements the Area interface. Now to add a new shape, one would add a new class and implement the Area interface rather than modify the original switch statement.

Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP)

LSP states that child class objects must be substitutable with objects of the parent class without affecting the correctness of the code.

Imagine a parent class ‘Bird’ with method ‘fly()’, and child classes ‘Penguin’ and ‘Eagle’. Both inherit ‘fly()’ because ‘Penguin’ and ‘Eagle’ are child classes of ‘Bird’. Because penguins cannot fly, the ‘fly()’ method in ‘Penguin’ has been overridden to do nothing. Doing this would violate LSP because objects of ‘Penguin’ would not be substitutable for objects of ‘Bird’.

Interface Segregation Principle (ISP)

ISP states that users should not be forced to implement interfaces they will not use.

Imagine an interface ‘Worker’ that has methods ‘work()’ and ‘eatOfficeLunch()’. Classes ‘FieldWorker’ and ‘OfficeWorker’ both implement the ‘Worker’ interface. Because ‘FieldWorker’ does not eat in office, the method ‘eatOfficeLunch()’ is unnecessary. This violates ISP because ‘FieldWorker’ is forced to implement ‘eatOfficeLunch()’ although the method will not be used.

Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP)

DIP states that high-level modules should not depend on low-level modules, keeping that as separate as possible.

For example, there’s a project with high-level systems (backend logic), that relies on low-level modules (database access). However the project’s team wants to change the database from one type to a different. Because the high-level systems are specifically written and depend on the database type, they would no longer work once the database type changes. Having high-level systems be more abstract and able to be implemented in different ways is ideal.

Conclusion

The article used was chosen because it gave examples with code, making understanding easy. As someone who wishes to have a career in software development, knowing the best practices for designing maintainable code is crucial. I expect to apply these principles to all future projects.

Resources:

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/solid-design-principles-in-software-development/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Zack's CS Blog by ztram1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.