Category Archives: cs-wsu

Week 13

The next classes will be about Software technical review it would be great to get a step ahead by delving into the concept. We only started with the review section of the code but fully understood it before the class could skip the barriers of never implementing this idea. Whenever doing something new there is always a barrier which can be difficult at first but with practical knowledge, it can be implemented with a greater effect.  

This article first talks about why there is a technical review. There are technical reviews for the company’s higher-ups who may not be fully aware of the coding process and the difficulties that come with it. They have to understand the developer’s importance to the business because they are spending a lot of money with ineffective results. Many times deliveries aren’t are time and come in fault states having several bugs. This is where a technical review comes in handy it’s a deep dive that provides a suitable perspective. Their definition of a technical review is a deep dive assessment of your software that provides findings and recommendations that be later adapted or discussed amongst your team. Common finds inside a technical review include slow or late deliveries which are just not meeting the due date, random or persistent bugs an example would be fixing the same thing over and over again, and sleepless nights because of worrying too much. These aren’t the end be it all every technical review is different and should be focussed on your team’s goals. The main discussion should be of pain points the things that keep you up at night to make the software complete. Process and team review is another key ingredient that makes sure everyone is working on the right task or if there are changes that need to be made plus an idea to every team member’s contribution to the project. The last thing the team should do is an effective summary that can be graded with a brief description. Detailed findings and recommendations that can be read by people not in depth with coding so they can get an idea of what is being done behind the scenes and can tell the team what needs to change.

Reading this article gave me an idea as to why we do technical reviews because when doing mine I was stuck trying to figure out problems in the code. I didn’t want to nitpick and find small issues that would seem redundant because at times it is better to keep it clean and simple. But understanding that this needs to be done to prove to people on the other side of the business that work is being done is a great insight. It makes a lot of sense that other people in a company would want to know what is happening on other sides of the department.

Technical Review: A Trusted Look Under the Hood

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

Week 12

Considering that we have been working on the Mars rover for the past two weeks, I decided to find an article that correlated with this. I went straight to the source and found something about the actual Mars rover. I was able to find an article that piqued my interest. This article was specifically about the real rover and the people who worked on it. I chose this article to show the broad potential we all have inside the CS field that none of us even heard about. I hope to open your minds to all the possibilities you can do with code.

    The article begins by introducing the reader to Melody Ho a full-stack developer for the Nasa Mars website. She has a multitude of responsibilities she has to publish information about every mission and create data pipelines to be accessible to the public. Her journey began by working on a basic HTML book and playing computer games. She gives her reflection on her journey to inspire the next generation of women in space and technology. She most enjoys programming code that is efficient and adapting it to the best version of code possible. When she was growing up she was considering a career in computer games because she hadn’t yet seen the opportunities available for programming. She leaves the article by advising the next generation. She says to embrace new things and don’t be scared because these are opportunities that are needed to succeed. Technology is constantly changing don’t be discouraged if all doesn’t click it will take time.

   Reading this article gave me more of an introspective view of someone’s life in coding. This article doesn’t have much connection to the code we do in class but I think it’s very interesting to see the whole perspective of a coding journey. This article touches upon aspects that you may not think about every day but it gives much attention to what is important. Melody trying to inspire the next generation is very touching. She didn’t have to do this but she did. For me, it gave me a broader view of programming because sometimes you may have a tunnel vision of what you can do with your code but the possibilities are endless. There are a lot of connections that you may not see on an everyday basis. She mentioned how she double majored in business and I didn’t even see the correlation of coding in a management setting but it’s there. There are a lot of connections in programming with other skills there are some I haven’t thought about.

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/coding-brings-mars-data-down-earth

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

Week 11

Deciding on a topic this week I decided to delve into Test Driven Development (TDD). I found an article with an engaging title “Test-Driven Development (TDD): A Time-Tested Recipe for Quality Software” by Ferdinando Santacroce. This would be very useful for me and the whole class because it’s fresh in our minds and we will continue to work with this concept. Getting a firmer grasp on this topic will help me with future assignments and homework. It’s always great to get an insider view with experience inside the field connecting it to what we learn in class.

This article begins with the history of TDD giving credit to Kent Beck one of the first “extreme programmers”. At the time nobody had ever reversed the idea of testing starting with a test instead of the actual code. The purpose of writing a test before the code would help programmers put them in the perspective of the maker making it easier to create the software. This would make more tunnel-focused code with much more simplicity because of just focusing on the test. Plus the codes get rapid feedback because all the tests have been made. TDD has the fastest feedback loop only surpassed by pair programing. Currently, TDD is widespread inside the field and several teams utilize it day to day. It’s hard to adapt to this type of coding scheme but with time it is proven to be a key to success. Minor grievances may also come up because this type of process can be too rigid or the lack of tools.  

After reading this article getting a glimpse into the history of how this came to be. It didn’t specifically specify when it started but I assume it was around the 90s because it mentions how common it is now. Understanding the benefits of doing this test answers my question why would you decide to do your coding process in reverse? What we have been learning is that it will be conventional to have code and then write the test connected to the already processed code. The benefits of cutting down time because of the faster feedback times and leading to less complicated code, I now understand its purpose. That is a recurring theme with code the simpler the better because you are never working alone. Maybe it is a self-contained project but your future self may not understand your complex code and updates to the code should be easy to do not a headache. 

https://semaphoreci.com/blog/test-driven-development

From the blog cs-wsu – DCO by dcastillo360 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 10 Blog Post

Searching for an article this week I looked for something relating to mocking. Considering last week I did the negatives on mocking I think it’s valuable to have various perspectives. Seeing multiple ideas with mocking can give us an idea of how to implement them in the future. The writer of this article is a reliable source being a Java script developer. Getting information from someone in the industry can give a perspective inside the workforce and how people inside see different ideas. Not everyone may agree with using the same coding language but seeing how developers see different concepts can give an idea of the drawbacks to stuff and where in our own experiences can we improve. Overall this article is a great way to see how mocking is seen inside the workforce by an experienced professional.   

In this article, Eric Elliot focuses on the drawbacks of excessive mocking. He points out how brittle tests and how they can be easily broken. There broken simply just from the change of implementation even though the behavior stays the same. Another point is a false sense of security because of there lack of accuracy that occurs from not using accurate real behavior. This is a fault in the test because the test will pass even if it isn’t supposed to. Third, he focuses on complexity overload which is just adding too much complexity can make the code harder to understand and maintain. Elliot still believes in mocking but a more balanced approach can overall help the program. Mocking should be used sparingly and when there actual weight for its use. All together Elliott wants the audience to create a strategy that will have confidence in their code correctness while also minimizing any negatives of excessive mocking. 

Reading this article at first I thought it would be more of a pro mocking but it’s more in between. It says its flaws while still sharing the positives. After reading this article I understand that mocking can cut time but it can bring flaws to testing. The best time to utilize mocking is when time is scarce and later it can updated with time. It still isn’t the ultimate be-all to testing but with a balance, it will work. Understanding these flaws can foresee issues that may come up when mocking. Mocking should never bring up complexities that can complicate the code and should always have a priority in simple to understand and easy maintenance.

View at Medium.com
https://medium.com/javascript-scene/mocking-is-a-code-smell-944a70c90a6a

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

Week 9 Blog Post

Choosing a topic for this week I tried to find something we had recently touched upon. Last week we went over mocking and expanding my knowledge of this topic can benefit me and the class. Searching for articles about mocking I stumbled upon one that shares the negatives of using mocking data. To counter-attack the ideas we learned in class it is always great to know both sides to using a concept. 

This article doesn’t fully dispose of mocking but gives ideas when it’s good to use. It gives a variety of examples including “Isolating the unit under test from other components or dependencies that are not relevant to the test, Speeding up the test execution by avoiding network calls or database queries that can be slow or unreliable, and Controlling the test input and output by creating predictable and consistent data that can be easily verified”. These ideas are then counterposed to the negatives such as “Introducing errors or inconsistencies between the mock data and the real data, which can lead to false positives or false negatives in the test results, Reducing the coverage and confidence of the test, by not testing the actual behavior and logic of the external source or the interaction with it, and Increasing the maintenance and complexity of the test, by requiring extra code and logic to create and manage the mock data”. The flaws of mocking data are mainly it does not use real data making it much more different from the real data creating disparities between the two. These tests ignore scenarios with much more complexity and these error and bugs can go unseen. The author assures the reader to use a data source to improve the tests.

After reading this article it gave me insight into the negatives of using mocking. The week prior activities made the use of mocking reduce time in creating classes but it’s good to know when it should be used and when it shouldn’t. I wish there was a perfect solution for every test but to find bugs in your code you must expand your horizon. Reading this article made me see that a variety of tests testing different things can overall benefit you. You never have to completely ignore a type of test but being able to see the positives and negatives can save you in the long run. Plus it will allow you to have a broader knowledge knowing that this may have flaws but there are things I can add to have a satisfactory end product.       

View at Medium.com
https://medium.com/@queenskisivuli/why-mocking-data-is-a-bad-practice-for-testing-a20d2d7104aa
View at Medium.com
View at Medium.com

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

Week 8 blog Post

For this week I found an article about writing code considering we have been writing classes for the past few classes. The article I found stuck out to me because of its title “Writing Code an Art Form”. People always use the analogy of code being like learning a new language but I never heard anyone consider it as art. From the countless articles I could have chosen without this title, I may have never chosen it to begin with.

This article first starts with a background of how the idea of this article came to be. The setup was that the author was working as a junior developer who had to get a recently hired senior developer with 10 years of experience acquainted with their program. I can only imagine how that interaction was set up and whoever was leading the group should have probably reconsidered who should help the new employee. Even though the senior developer had far advanced experience his code was not easily readable. The author was even taken aback because the senior developer commented how the author likes to write pretty code. The author goes into detail on how poor documentation must be taken into account because other flaws can arise from bad naming conventions for variables/functions, spacing, and having the mindset to problem-solve. Keep the code easy to maintain, read, and debug don’t write spaghetti code.

Now reading this article gave me insight into the inner workings of the tech field. I would have never assumed that a new employee would be getting trained by the second recently hired. I would have assumed that someone with more experience with the project would have filled in the new person but maybe it could be that there both coming from similar places. Both of them are the newest employees and could be easier to help another person adapt to the environment. Reading this article has also reinforced ideas that keep your code simple and clean. My main takeaway was whenever you write code don’t just write it for yourself to understand but for everyone. Let’s say you are working on a project on your own you might just get enclosed in how you understand code nobody but you will be able to update it. Even if you don’t care that someone else will update it in the future your code can be so unreadable that future you may have no idea what you created. In a way, code is like writing notes and there is an art to writing good notes.  

https://hinchman-amanda.mehttps://hinchman-amanda.medium.com/writing-code-an-art-form-e41e459bd2f6dium.com/writing-code-an-art-form-e41e459bd2f6

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

Exploring the LibreFoodPantry and Thea’s Pantry

As someone who has been learning about Computer Science for 7 years, I have always wanted to have a shot at being able to create an open-source project both for my career and creativity. When reading through the Values from the LibreFoodPantry Main Page, specifically about the “FOSSisms”, I had very closely related to the 11th FOSSism, the FOSSism that stated “It’s not what you know; it’s what you want to learn”. I had found this particular FOSSism inspiring as I have always wanted to create open-source software for solving particular tasks, even if I did not know anything about the software or the items that the software is trying to process. FOSSism 11 also helps to clarify the importance of FOSSism 3, where the goal is simply to “Give back” to the community, as I am hoping to use the things I learn from working with open-source software to help me with Software Engineering in the future.

After reading through the different items about the LibreFoodPantry, I delved into the documentation under the Thea’s Pantry repository to explore more about the open-source software being used. While I did read through the functionality of the software, some being more familiar than others, I was really intrigued with the User Stories under the Developer documentation. I read through the stories about how a user would think over designing a particular software. Reading through this part of the documentation, I had found that in order for a particular part of the system to function as intended, a user would have to make great use of a real-world problem in order to brainstorm new features to contribute to Thea’s Pantry. I am hoping that these user stories can help me use my current skills as a Computer Scientists to help make a great contribution to Thea’s Pantry.

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

Software Architecture Patterns (Token Blog)

While I do not have a great understanding of Software Architecture as much as I do with programming the Backend of that same software, I still take into appreciation the looks of its design.  When I took sight of “The top 5 software architecture patterns: How to make the right choice” written by Freelance writer Peter Wayner, one of the things that was eye-catching was how the Software Architecture Patterns were described throughout this blog.  While the Microservices Architecture was one of the only architectures that I had familiarized myself with while reading through the different architectures, I had been more interested in the endless vacuum of strengths that the Space-based architecture had when seeing the benefits that it poses.  The article had given a very understanding of all the Software Architectures by showing their strengths and their weaknesses, making it easier to see where their limits are foreseen.

I chose this article since I searched far and wide for a topic that I least understood, but still would be inspired to follow through reading about it for fulfillment.  The article does a really great job at grabbing the reader, as the most complex part about trying to understand a Software Architecture is when you are trying not to break your own code with a Software Architecture that poses a great risk in causing your program to crash unexpectedly.  For the simplicity of the reader, Wayner had given either a telling example or a visualization that would help the reader have a simple explanation of what the structure is designed to do for your program as its structure.

The biggest takeaway I had after reading this article was that I was still able to learn that each architecture shapes your program in a way to help better understand what to do with your program next.  However, Software Architecture is still only the beginning of what you need to do to fully design your software.  A software may still need changes that an architecture alone cannot fix, but what an architecture should do is help you see the full picture of your own work that you have done.  A Software Architecture is only a frame in the end, but the program you create would be best suited for an environment that is needed to put it on full display.

https://techbeacon.com/app-dev-testing/top-5-software-architecture-patterns-how-make-right-choice

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

REST API (Token blog)

When I was first introduced to the concept of an API, a shortened abbreviation of Application Programming Interface, I never thought of it being used far outside the scope of Computer Science.  However, as I revisited some software that I used in the past and observed the current software I worked with recently, I was more than surprised by the fact that an API is universally used across the Internet.  For this blog, I explored a blog called “10 Most Popular Frameworks For Building RESTful APIs” written by Developer Advocate at Moesif, Preet Kaur. In this blog, the author explained that when deciding on the API framework to use, you needed to choose one that uses a programming language that you are familiar with, but you can also use in spite of its shortcomings.  Further down the blog, she gave some examples of popular API frameworks that are used by many developers; one of those frameworks that was mentioned was Express JS, a framework I am familiar with.

One of the biggest contributing factors that brought me to use this article for this blog is not only the different frameworks that Kaur had given examples of, but also where you can find and learn about them.  Reading this blog got me hooked on the many different types of API frameworks that I could look at to familiarize myself with each that may give me a better understanding of the specifics of REST API for my drive toward a career in Software Engineering.  Even if the frameworks in question were written in programming languages that I am not as efficient in programming in, I still believe that this blog has helped me in understanding the overall meaning of building an API for use in creating applications and beyond.

My biggest takeaway from this blog is that the API framework you use to build an application, software or other kind of design is not only dependent on your skill at programming or engineering, but also what your goal is with using the framework you choose for your creation.  While this blog was more general than the previous ones I read through, I still stand with a vision that the API framework that I use will only be as helpful as the skills I use to develop and engineer my path to a greater goal in creating the perfect software.

Reference: https://www.moesif.com/blog/api-product-management/api-analytics/10-Most-Popular-Frameworks-For-Building-RESTful-APIs/

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

Writing Clean Code in Python

At Worcester State University, I have been learning about programming through the context of Java. However, there are many other programming languages aside from Java. Though they likely follow the same principles and patterns, there are also inevitable differences, or at least a different approach to these same principles or patterns in practice.

The article Best Practices to Write Clean Python Code written by vanigupta20024 goes over Python specific clean code practices. The author presents four main tips:

  1. Clean indentation
  2. Using virtual environments
  3. Modular code
  4. “Pythonic” code

Clean indentation was taught in class under the context of “horizontal openness” or “horizontal spacing”. This principle is necessary for all languages, but it is especially necessary for Python. Python does not use braces to specify code blocks. Instead, it relies solely on space and tab indentations. Because of this, not only is clean indentation required to readable code, it is required for executable code!

Using virtual environments is something specific to Python. It allows the programmer to create a separate and custom environment for their project where any installed libraries and packages are separated from those installed outside the environment. That way, dependencies can be easily shared and managed separately for each project. Instead of having someone install libraries one-by-one, it is much cleaner to have the person run a requirements.txt file to automatically install all the necessary libraries and packages to run the code in one execution.

Modular code is a tool in Python that helps programmers follow the DRY principle (Don’t Repeat Yourself). This makes code clean by allowing programmers to create something like a code library that can be imported and implemented into the Python program without having to have all the code in the repository. Even better, modules can be uploaded into the Python database to be accessed by anyone, meaning that instead of having to create the function themselves, programmers can simply import the function they need to use in their code, making the code less dense and neater.

“Pythonic” code refers to special Python shortcuts that can make code easier to read by simplifying a task that would normally take multiple lines of code. For example, when swapping values, a programmer might initially think to write code this way:

value_a = 5
value_b = 6
temp = 5

value_a = value_b
value_b = temp

However, that is a lot of lines simply for swapping two values with the addition of a third variable. Instead, there is Python shortcut for this that simplifies the process.

value_a = 5
value_b = 6

value_a, value_b = value_b, value_a

Clean code is definitely an aspect of programming that I want to become more adept with. Python is not a language taught at WSU, but it was the sole language I used in my internship and research projects which is why I decided to do research on tips and tricks for clean code through the context of Python programming.

Source: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/best-practices-to-write-clean-python-code/#

From the blog Stories by Namson Nguyen on Medium by Namson Nguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.