Category Archives: cs-wsu

Expose your Ignorance Pattern

This learning pattern is very important it exposes us to a very delicate issue. Although the Software Development community is built around everchanging technologies, and we are all shooting at a moving target, the fear of letting others know what you do not know is constantly present. Particularly to me, another analogous fear that I think is related to this learning pattern is the fear of you believing you know something and being shown the opposite. I think that at this level in our learning careers, so close to graduating, this pattern is extremely important. This period of entering the field officially, is the period in which we feel the need to show what we know, coupled with doubts and the lack of experience which rob us the confidence we need.

I hope that once we internalize this pattern regardless of the fear of using it, the field, out in the wild will become gradually more amenable. Perhaps this is why I think that a job with a grounded company with tradition in technology is the best steppingstone to a software developer. Every company small or large today relies on technologies that we must understand. This is the reason I fear the non-tech companies that need tech people. The fear that they will expect the newbie to know it all, or worst, not understand what it really takes to get what they want. I think that this fear will probably gradually disappear maybe at about 2 years in the field.      

To sum up I must say that this pattern served me well in my career as a student and I think it will serve me just as well as a developer. I feel lucky to know that I can relate and count on people that are either having the same problem as me or have surpass it to help me. Reaching out to ask people for help is not only better than staying ignorant but help build confidence in the person whom you asked. Even when you ask someone who does not understand the field, their out of the box answer may guide you to a better understanding. I found that I discovered a lot of the answers I needed just by formulating the question and dissecting it to a non tech aficionado.  

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

Apprenticeship Patterns Chapter 1 and 2-6 introductions Summary

I found interesting that a lot of the practices mentioned in the book are probably day to day patterns that we practice involuntarily. Some patterns are surprisingly new and offer a good way to cope with the workflow of continuous learning. The comparison with medieval ways of artisanship in which the learning takes a practicum meaning and the theoretical is stripped out in favor of physical interaction which is very interesting. I am an enthusiast of the theoretical realm, but I must agree that expertise which people wrongly associate with the illusion of talent only comes with continuous long-term repetitions of small actions on limited theoretical content.     

The book showed me that there is more than one way to navigate through a lifelong learning journey. It is comforting to know that in the Software Development work environment the continuous improvement presented by the authors is not only present but encouraged. The idea of sharing these patterns and improving on them is very open source like. It shows the developer understanding of the need for each other and that there is no downside to help the general improvement of the community.  

The chapter that talks about perpetual learning is enlightening. It absolutely homes in on the greatest obstacle to learning which is distraction.  I agree to it but have my reservations because it also mentions that if you love learning you get over these distractions. What I think is truer is that focus is also the most important skill to be practiced. It involves more than a set of actions and habits; it also involves chemical reactions and sensorial exposure as well as countless parameters out of our control. I confess that as I navigate through my undergrad incursion, I came across supplements to improve focus and used them even if just for placebo effect. I have set controls such as continuous study times, set brakes, meditating 20 minutes for every hour, sleeping a minimum of 8 hours, balancing topics by due date and importance, not consuming alcohol even in social events, ignoring people and everything that is not study. Which is why I have a pile of mail and bills after every semester. But even after all the controls I still must continuously adjust and adapt to optimize focus. Without focus there can be no real learning.        

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

Breakable Toy Pattern

The breakable toy pattern is something I practice often without realizing it was considered a pattern for good learning practice. I must say at times I find it to be a double edge sword. Sometimes I look for things beyond my abilities and end up stuck, depressed, and put it in the back burner, but I end up unpacking them later [because I’m stubborn] sometimes over multiple iterations and when I finally get them working the achievement felt is increased in the same order. I think this pattern probably pairs well with other patterns such as confront your own ignorance maybe I’ll write about this one next. Anyway, I want to talk about how he describes the pattern in his own way.

The author makes a good point in the first few paragraphs that the point of a breakable toy was to be able to work on things you don’t usually work on. This description enforces that this pattern helps you learn without side effects on the systems you work on that are not toys. I believe that he makes this distinction to allow for a daring approach, one that would allow you to try something just to see what happens. This allows for a much deeper understanding of any problem. It is like testing to find boundaries, critical systems may not allow such playful adventures but even these critical systems had to be prototyped at some point and someone stress tested the system so you could have a safe playpen.

I know stress testing is an idea that could be consider a little alien to the breakable toy pattern, but I believe it is part of it. When building these breakable toys, we use tools and frame works that we sometimes stress to the end of their abilities. Then we find better tools and frameworks or learn to better use and manage the ones we have.

To conclude the breakable toy pattern allows for growth not only skill-wise but also mentally when we exercise self-control. It allows us to practice focus and confront anxiety. To build the skill set of building skill sets.       

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

Why Vue

There are several frontend frameworks available to pick from, so why do we use Vue? To research about Vue and learn about its benefits, I decided to read blogs from Vue mastery, specifically one written by Lauren Ramirez.

  • Vue does not use up too much memory. Vue allows us to import only the pieces of the library that we need, which means whatever we don’t use will be removed for us via treeshaking.
  • Virtual DOM (Document Object Model) uses compile-based optimization resulting in faster rendering times.
  • To work with Vue, we did not have to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It was surprisingly easy how we were able to learn as we go.
  • Vue has many libraries that can be added as needed. Some of which are:
    • Vue Router (client-side routing)
    • Vuex (state management)
    • Vue Test Utils (unit testing)
    • vue-devtools (debugging browser extension)
    • Vue CLI (for rapid project scaffolding and plugin management)
  • Vue’s one of the best features – Composition API;
    • We are able to group features into composition functions then call them in the setup instead of having large unreadable and unmaintained code directly in setup.
    • We are able to export features from components into the functions. This means we don’t have to keep re-writing code and avoid having useless repetition.
  • Vue has enhanced support for TypeScript users as well.
  • In Vue, we are able to use multi root components. In most front-end frameworks component template should contain exactly one root element because sibling elements aren’t allowed. The way around to that problem is using functional components, they are components where you have to pass no reactive data means component will not be watching for any data changes as well as not updating itself when something in parent component changes. However, they are instance less and you cannot refer to them anymore and everything is passed with context. With the multi root component support of Vue (Vue 3), there are no such restrictions and we can use any number of tags inside the template section.
  • Vue 3 gives us the Teleport component, which allows us to specify template HTML that we can send to another part of the DOM. Sometimes a piece of a component’s template belongs there logically, but it would be preferable to render it somewhere else. This is useful for things like modals, which may need to be placed outside of the body tag or outside the Vue app.
  • Most importantly, Vue is open source. Vue has complete freedom to be community-driven and its bottom line is the satisfaction of its end users. It doesn’t have to answer to the company-specific feature demands and corporate bureaucracy.

Source: https://www.vuemastery.com/blog/why-vue-is-the-best-framework-for-2021-and-beyond/

From the blog CS-WSU – Towards Tech by murtazan and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Differences in RESTApi’s.

In class we have been working on a RESTApi, frontend/backend, that supports a Food Drive. So far, we have a database that stores Items with orders. These orders have an ID as well as the items. These orders have preferences, restrictions, and emails attached. We developed HTTP calls to manipulate this data in a Rest API. We developed ways for the admins in the backend to manipulate this data. And we developed ways for the users to interact with their orders and items within the frontend of the API.

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at RESTApis that are available through the internet that are individually made, professionally made, and company made. The number of APIs out there is extremely broad and vast. Which makes it very exciting. There is essentially an API for everything out there. From news, health, gaming, PayPal, etc. there is literally everything available to you to implement in your own web service app.

This website here is a database full of APIs that are available for you to use.

Link: https://rapidapi.com/hub

                This led me to a couple interesting ones. For example, a gaming API for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It’s neat. You can implement this API into your web service and users will be able to get access to multiple statistics throughout the game. Say you wanted to develop a gaming website. Where users build teams, go to a match finder, play other teams, and improve their placing on a website leaderboard. If Call of Duty is one of the games these users play against each other on, you could implement this API. And allow users to show off their in-game stats.

                Try bringing this site even further. Imagine giving each users an account that has an empty balance. If there is a way for them to add their own money into the balance, then you could create wagers on the match finder. The match would require a price to enter. If the players have the funds in their balance, it will allow them to play. You would need to implement someway for the users to add money into their accounts. That’s when you implement the PayPal API.

Paypal API Link: https://developer.paypal.com/docs/api-basics/

Since PayPal interacts with user’s banking and extremely confidential information, to work with a PayPal API, you need Developer access. When you create a sandbox or live REST API app, PayPal generates a set of OAuth 2.0 client ID and secret credentials for the sandbox or live environment. You must receive a access token to be authorized. To go live with a PayPal API, your application must get accepted by PayPal before having access to any accounts. They way the accomplish this is by giving you a Sandbox that acts as a life environment but isn’t connected to any accounts. Once all your testing and debugging is done, that’s when you apply to use it live.

From the blog CS-WSU – Andrew Sychtysz Software Developer by Andrew Sychtysz and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Tips on easing the learning process of JavaScript

After a long 2 and a half years of learning to code, there are many challenges I have come across that halted my process. Here I am going to sum some of the issues I may have come across during my journey. And some tips I have found to be incredibly useful to change the tides and direction of how I learn.  

                First things first, understand your distractions. Why you are distracted, and how to make “learning to code” the distraction for you. What I mean is, picture how you use your social media. You may think “I am just going to check Facebook for a few minutes before I get to coding”. Next thing you know, you are on Facebook for three hours. Where did the time go? Somehow, someway you just got sucked into what you decided to put in front of yourself. What if, you decided instead “I am going to just code for 10 minutes then play around on Facebook.”. Next thing you know, you got sucked into coding for hours instead of spending all your time on social media. It will always be better to leave yourself no time to look at social media than having no time to practice coding.

This is how you should structure all your priorities. Don’t treat yourself first in hopes that this will give you the motivation to start getting your responsibilities out of the way. There is a limited time in every single day. We all know, the longer the day goes on, the more tired and slow you become. Utilize your energy correctly. You should be treating yourself when you are already burnt out. That way when all your energy is dispensed, you are relaxing readying yourself to recharge rather than forcing yourself to continue working when you are exhausted. This will help with sleep issues too. Using your brain at maximum capacity is going to ultimately make it harder for you to fall asleep. Utilize your time correctly during the day.

Now your coding, great job! Only problem is, you may find yourself being over-confident now. Just because you have solved something and moved along with almost no hiccups, doesn’t mean you have that solidified it in your knowledge. Learning something quickly is the worst thing that can happen. This sets you up to forget very quickly. The most memorable thing for a person is when they struggled hard, overcame their adversity, and accomplished their goal. You forget a cakewalk the minute it’s over. Limit the number of things you are learning at one time. And practice it in code. That way, you won’t forget. The key point is to make your work memorable for the next time it comes up.

I found this site, which is somewhat a journal. That gives tips on how to learn JavaScript Faster. It touches on a lot of the things I just described.

Link: https://www.sitepoint.com/mind-tricks-to-learn-javascript-faster/

From the blog CS-WSU – Andrew Sychtysz Software Developer by Andrew Sychtysz and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Blog Post #6 – SQL VS NOSQL

After having listened to blogs and watched videos [1] on SQL VS NOSQL and having spent a number of years working as a SQL developer, my view is that this isn’t a battle. Each have their own uses in a given situation. There are times when you need a very strong, well organized, secure, database design, and this will usually fall to being a SQL database. This is usually, but not always done in a business or enterprise setting, but also works well on mobile and desktop friendly implementations.

NOSQL is really just a growth from other ways simple data formats have been carried around over the years. Starting with flat files, then to CSV (comma-separated values files), then to more formalized “strings” of data in the world of markup languages. This started with SQML/HTML, then to XML, then to JSON. These formats continue to evolve to worlds of XAML and others, but for our discussion, let’s use JSON.

It is easy to describe my lunch as “Name: Joe, Time: Noon, Food: Cheeseburger”.

There is no implied database in this text string. It clearly says my name is Joe and I eat burgers at noon. In SQL, there would be Students, Orders, Inventory tables, all with multiple links and schemas to describe the same line. ( The key/value pair Name/Joe is represented in JSON as Name: Joe,)

It is very important to determine what your requirements are before deciding on if or what technology to use for a given purpose.

There are times when writing and testing particularly sophisticated SQL stored procedures where I was frustrated with the complexity and rigidity of the data integrity requirements but was then rewarded with the benefits of the product. Very well encapsulated, easy to use once constructed, stable, secure, fault tolerant products were the goal.

On the other hand, it is easier to use JSON to describe simpler situations that don’t require the relational connection between components that SQL vertical databases do.

I think both the XAML and JSON markup formats are easier to read than XML or HTML. I am also a fan of CSV files when key/value pairing isn’t required.

The internet seems to have “wars” frequently on what is better A or B? This very frequently comes down to “Sometimes A, sometimes B”. This competition between ideas is the reason I am optimistic towards the future. Someone is always trying to reinvent a better way to do almost everything.

As a software developer, you are constantly learning, relearning, unlearning, reevaluating, and improving. This process is enjoyable to me, but I know some who hate their job because of this constant change. For me, the key when getting frustrated on a problem was in learning how to back away, take a walk, and come back with a fresh outlook.

References:

1. U.S. Financial services market

From the blog cs@worcester – (Twinstar Blogland) by Joe Barry and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

codegrepper.com

I used to believe that this was a pro in my coding abilities but the further I go, the more I realize that is actually a con. When I first started coding in CS140, I realized that I have had a unique ability when it came to paying attention to detail. When I am absolutely lost or confused, I will hammer the nail all day. Meaning, I will read every single character in every line of code before I decide that I am completely lost. This is great, time and time again I have proven that no code is a match for me. I always seemed to outwork my failure. Before the deadline passed, I had made sure that I submitted something that makes sense and works.

Once I started working on our latest Javascript homeworks, I realized that this is not helpful to me. I have managed to get my codes to work. And I have managed to get them to do what I needed them to do. That being said, if you asked me to explain the code in plain english I would struggle to do so. That’s because I just spent hours and hours playing around with the code. Instead of researching basics and creating a great fundamental understanding for myself, I just went for it. I believe life would be alot easier if I had this fundamental understanding before I began coding rather than trying to grasp it during coding.

Codegrepper.com is something I found while researching these fundamentals. It seems that I have came across a gold mine. This link right here specifically helped me work on the get method within my javascript for the HTTP Get request.

https://www.codegrepper.com/code-examples/javascript/javascript+find+object+in+array+by+property+value

Immediately you have a code snippet of javascript which finds object in array by property value. And it begins to build up. It shows you how to find object by property. How to find ID in an array javascript. And so on. This website also has a search engine that allows you to search anything. It seems to be an incredible tool, especially when learning new languages. If you type “hello world”, it gives you the intro code snippets for any language you can think of. I will definitely take more use of codegrepper.com moving forward.

From the blog CS-WSU – Andrew Sychtysz Software Developer by Andrew Sychtysz and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

API Development in the Field of Computer Science.

Dear Classmates,

Please consider making a LinkedIn as soon as possible. Take a look. The amount of job listings searching for someone with a B.S. in Computer Science is incredible, especially in regards to API development. An API developer can make a phenomenal salary. What we are doing currently in CS343 is so extremely important for our futures.

APIs go back to the early days of computing. Even before the personal computer. It was normally used as a library for operating systems. It was always local to the systems, although sometimes it did pass messages between mainframes. Eventually APIs left the local environment. And became a very important piece of technology for remote integration of data.

In class, we worked with 3 sets of codes so far. The Items API, Frontend, and Backend. These all work together to create our Application. The ItemsAPI is a specification. It creates our Items. The characteristics, fundamentals, and how the object is going to preform. It will allow both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of the service without access to source code, documentation, or through network traffic inspection. When it is properly defined, a consumer can understand and interact with the remote service with a minimal amount of implementation logic. The Frontend/Backend model is a way of sharing or organizing an application’s workload. Every application has a frontend and a backend. The frontend is the part of the application that receives input from a client. The backend is the part of the application that processes information, such as processing a payment or looking up customer information. These often communicate with each other. For example, the frontend will allow users to interact by providing credit card information. And the backend will charge their cards for purchases. The frontend receives input. And the backend processes the information.

This will be so absolutely huge for us in our futures. Think about it. Almost every business at this point has a website. You could easily find yourselves making 50k, 90k, 120k, etc. managing these businesses Web service/Applications. As we saw with COVID, there was a massive push to doing almost everything through technology. I can assure you, there will be millions of businesses looking for people like us. And you will be such an important backbone to the business. They will have no choice to give you the Salary you deserve. Please consider making a LinkedIn as soon as possible. Also, do your best to live inside our applications Professor Wurst has supplied for us to work with. If we learn to be comfortable with this type of work, we will absolutely find success in our field.

Thank you and Good luck! ?

From the blog CS-WSU – Andrew Sychtysz Software Developer by Andrew Sychtysz and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

DinD or DooD but not D&D

While surfing my usual waves at google I came across an article with some peculiar information. It does not directly relate to our current homework, which deals with the backend and API ties, but it is somewhat relevant. The article presents the argument of security in using DinD as a liability exposing the operating system to the container directly. Another important factor was the reliability of DinD and unintended consequences and conflicts with the use of it. I can’t think of possible bugs that docker in docker can cause, but I guess I can see how different operating systems with different file hierarchy and possibly arbitration can be a messy thing to untangle. Regardless, he shows a quite simple and cool way to have an important DinD capability without using DinD.

Why use docker in docker

while scouting for articles I came across this one https://jpetazzo.github.io/2015/09/03/do-not-use-docker-in-docker-for-ci/ by Jérôme Petazzoni, it is interesting and tells the story of how DinD  was actually created to help develop docker itself. The use of DinD, as it appears to me, is mostly based on the need to run multiple images within docker to achieve continuous integration. Being able to test the entire system and making sure that integrity is maintained is what makes DinD so useful, or does it?

Why not use docker in docker

The author of the article mentioned tells the many headaches of developing DinD, some of which involves convoluted solutions that worked partially. The more I work and learn from this class, the more I determine that, if something is really complicated and requires too many hacks, it us not worth pursuing. I believe this was the case for early DinD. Some of the problems encountered were different security modules and many others that I am not quite familiar with, and can’t really discuss intelligently about. But DinD moved on, and a lot of improvements were made to improve on a lot of the issues, although I believe issues remain, partially because the article’s author involved with the development of it, asks you to use something else.

Do this instead, DooD docker out of docker

Thankfully, the article’s author gives a solution to the problem, and I didn’t even have to go back to the original google wave I surfed earlier to retrieve it. He mentions DinD works in some kind of quasi object-oriented principle of inheritance, where the containers have a family like hierarchy, this may cause some disturbance in the force. The solution he shows act squashing that inheritance down to a sibling relation, no one depends on anyone, we are all in the same level. The solution works by volume mount, mapping the docker socket. This is the solution for the running DooD in a project that requires continuous integration, “docker run -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock  -ti docker”, there are probably advantages as well as disadvantages to doing this but ill leave that for you to decide.

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