I am writing this blog post about the “Expose Your Ignorance” apprenticeship pattern from the Apprenticeship Patterns book. To summarize the idea of this pattern, it is about making known what it is that you do not know in order to learn. People have a tendency of wanting to appear competent and knowledgeable about any job that is expected of them, but faking expertise is counterproductive. It is more helpful to seek knowledge than it is to hide ignorance. I have been looking at job descriptions lately, and many of them are filled with expectations and preferences referring to things I have never worked with before or have minimal experience with. My aptitude is for algorithms and data structures; I have studied and developed and implemented them a lot, for years. When it comes to “technologies”, though, I do not know anything about software development. There are so many languages and frameworks and libraries and acronyms that I am not familiar with because they have never been necessary or relevant before, and now I see that a lot of jobs are expecting proficiency with these tools. I am used to solving problems without extra tools, so in order to work in a new environment where an unfamiliar tool is necessary, it is important to establish that I do not know how to do anything using the tool. Then, I can begin to ask questions and learn how to apply my skills to the new problem. During the CAPSTONE project this semester, for instance, I am required to work with the Angular framework, and a tool for making things with Angular. I have no practical experience with any of these things, so whenever I need to know something in particular, I put out a question, so then I can learn. Rather than going off and trying to learn how to use these utilities, it is much more efficient to begin by seeing whether anybody else around already has an answer. Sharing knowledge and asking questions is a much more practical way to learn about how to work in a new environment.

From the blog cs-wsu – klapointe blog by klapointe2 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I am writing this blog post about the “Read Constantly” apprenticeship pattern from the Apprenticeship Patterns book. To summarize the idea of this pattern, it is about spending more time reading about new material and ideas in order to stay in touch and learn about some new things. I think that this pattern is similar in many ways to the “Practice, Practice, Practice” apprenticeship pattern, because it is about taking the time and effort to become more familiar with a new topic. Reading research papers is an example given in the chapter. Any time I read about some unfamiliar topics, I always find that there is a huge depth of information that I have no idea about. Machine learning is one such topic that I spent a while reading about. After I had a good enough grasp of the basics behind the theory of it, I tried practicing implementing a basic multi layer feed forward neural network myself and have it classify some handwritten number symbols. Reading about it and implementing it was an interesting introduction into the field of machine learning, but continuing to read further into deep learning and the theory behind various learning algorithms, it becomes clear that there is still a ton about computer science that I have a ton to learn about. This is the case any time I look more than briefly into any broad topic. I was trying to implement a solution to a variant of the subset sum problem years ago and stumbled into NP-completeness and computational complexity theory. Constantly reading about new things is the only way to learn about different topics. The “problem” section in the book describes that there seems to be an endless amount of fundamental concepts that are unfamiliar despite proficiency in a programming language, and this is inevitable without reading constantly. Continuing to only practice in topics that are familiar makes it nearly impossible to expand into other fields without re-discovering them independently, which is unlikely when the areas are particularly advanced. Reading is like practicing learning. Proficiency in a language can only go so far.

From the blog CS@Worcester – klapointe blog by klapointe2 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week’s blog is gonna be about “The Long Road” pattern. This pattern is all about traveling the long road. No matter how much you try to master anything, it will always be ahead of you. Mastery is a lifetime journey. You got to love whatever it is you are mastering. That is why they said, “Choose a job that you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”

The book suggests valuing long term growth opportunities over salary and some sort of leadership or managerial role.  This long journey to become a master will bring you a rich set of skills. You will become skilled at learning, problem-solving, and developing a good relationship with your customers. You will learn to wield these abilities and technologies. If you go through this long road, you will realize and appreciate what being a software developer really is.

This journey would not be short. It will be a long winding road. You should have a goal. Being on this long road, you will be a software developer even when you’re old. This pattern is not gonna make you filthy rich like the other positions, but it will be rewarding. This pattern is not for everybody, there are more people who will take a higher position without blinking an eye. Everyone wants to achieve something big and probably make more money.

I don’t really agree with this pattern. I think that taking the promotion would be a better path. It is not every day that a promotion would happen or a better position would be available. So why not grab the opportunity. It will also teach you more skills since it would it is a different role, it will also have different responsibilities. You will also learn how everything is run in the company and not get stuck at just creating software. They do talk about in the solution, that this long road does not only apply to being a software developer but for any position.

This pattern is good if you see yourself doing the same thing 10 years from now. Although, in my opinion, that is not a good thing to do. I think we need a bit of variety so that we do not get tired of it.

From the blog cs-wsu – Computer Science by csrenz and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I am writing this blog post about the “Practice, Practice, Practice” apprenticeship pattern from the Apprenticeship Patterns book. To summarize the idea of this pattern, it is about the desire to improve and learn despite not having the opportunity to do so while working. The obvious solution that the book presents is to practice on your own time, while not working. Practicing something is certainly important; the process of practicing working with some idea is actively developing experience with that topic, rather than just reading about it and recognizing it. I have spent a lot of time reading about many different algorithms, and a lot of it does not really stay until I make it relevant by directly implementing it myself. The only consequence of doing this is educational, though; doing this while working would not be the appropriate time. Practice generally does not yield some purposeful product, whatever it is that is created in the end is only for the sake of experience. The book brings up a point about practicing the wrong things. I think this can be important. I have spent a lot of time practicing trying to write programs using the fewest amount of characters possible, which for obvious reasons is not a good way in general to go about programming. The result is typically a barely readable mess of what amounts to glorified machine code. I became good at it, but certainly the time would have been much better spent practicing something more practical than code golf. After gaining a lot of experience with different topics that I found interesting, I have been able to recognize situations where things I have practiced in the past are relevant and knew how to implement them as a solution. What I have noticed along the way is that now I would rather spend my time applying what I know than taking the time to practice something new and not produce anything meaningful. I still am interested in learning about a lot of things, but practice takes a lot of time, so the only way to learn is to take the extra time.

From the blog cs-wsu – klapointe blog by klapointe2 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s blog, I am going to be talking about “Retreat into Competence” pattern from the Apprenticeship Pattern book. This pattern is about realizing how little you know, or when the new challenges that you have taken are not working out so well.  As you work, there are going to be many projects and challenges that are gonna be assigned or you are going to take. Sometimes, these challenges can be something you have never done before, or it might be a roadblock that you are gonna have to clear and these challenges are making you realize how little you know.

The book’s solution to this pattern is to “Pull back, then launch forward like a stone from a catapult.” They said that you should retreat briefly into what your confident on doing and regain composure. Take some time to build something that you know how then use that experience to see how far you’ve really come and measure what else you are capable of. Being an apprentice there is going to be a lot of ups and downs. You will experience learning new technologies and use it to leverage your knowledge that would deliver value to your customers. But you will also experience terror, roadblocks that seem impossible to pass through. These challenges can be overwhelming at times but it is to be expected if you want to progress.

I totally agree with this pattern. There are going to be times when you will encounter problems that seem to be unsolvable or problems that will show you just how much you actually know. In life there are going to be problems that seem impossible to solve, we get overwhelmed and try to forget about it, which becomes a bigger problem. I like how the pattern suggests that you look back on what you know how to do first.  It will show you how far you’ve really come. This process might give you hope that no challenge is impossible, you just gotta go through all the learning again.

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

I am writing this blog post about the “Be the Worst” apprenticeship pattern from the Apprenticeship Patterns book. To summarize the idea of the pattern, it is about trying to be in the presence of people with more experience than you so that you can learn from them, as opposed to being experienced already and not having the opportunity to learn from others. I can see this being a useful way to learn, but at the same time it does seem a bit selfish to put your own education above the quality of whatever it is you happen to be working on with everyone else. To be the worst may indicate that you do not actually belong where you are while you exploit the opportunity to learn. If this does not turn out to be a concern then it is still the case that you would not be performing as well as anyone else, so it may be discouraging to have a responsibility and not be prepared for it. Maybe being the worst is taking it to the extreme, but the more general goal of not being the smartest person in the room is a good way to learn from the person who does have more experience. I have been programming in the same language for the last decade and I now know everything about the language down to the exact differences between each version, and that came from being involved with other people who had knowledge that I did not have. Now there is no learning opportunity after having mastered this language, so since I have not nearly the same level of experience in any other language, it would be a significant learning opportunity to surround myself with experts in another language that I intend to become versed in. Since I have learned everything I needed to know to do the things I want to do, I have stopped learning at the same rate. Moving forward into a career, I expect it will become necessary to be just as experienced in more languages, so engaging with experienced programmers who use those languages will be beneficial.

From the blog cs-wsu – klapointe blog by klapointe2 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s blog, I am going to be talking about The Deep End pattern from the Apprenticeship Pattern book. The Deep End was about taking that big step in your career. Grow your skills, your confidence, and your portfolio. Challenging yourself with bigger projects. This may involve new tasks, new teams, and new places.

The book suggests that you dive into the deep end. Waiting for opportunities until you’re ready will only set you back and be stuck doing mediocre work. So, if offered a high-profile role, take it. Growth only happens when you do something. But of course, there are risks involved in taking on bigger projects or high-profile roles. If you get it wrong, instead of growing, you might shrink. It might destroy your career as a software developer. But the risk is also the only thing that can help you grow, so take the risk with caution. They also suggest that you list down all the projects that you have done. What is the biggest successful project you have worked on, and the biggest codebase you have built on your own. After writing them down, use them as metrics to measure if you are going to be ready to take on a bigger project with more responsibility.

I found this pattern very interesting. Not because it is something new but it is something that I can relate to. I am usually the kid in the back of the room. I usually only do what is expected from us and do the minimal thing to pass or get a good grade. Whenever there is group work, I almost never volunteer to be the leader. I do not like having to bear that responsibility. I am scared that I would do something wrong and let down the team. Scared that I would not be able to do my role as a leader. Now, I am trying to change that. I am trying to get more involved when it comes to team projects. I am now trying to lead everyone when they do not know what to do. I try to make a decision that everyone can agree to. This pattern did not really change the way I work, but it reminds me that I still need to improve with being a leader.

From the blog cs-wsu – Computer Science by csrenz and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.