I continued reading The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin this week.  This blog post centers around the content of chapters three and four.  The majority of chapter three is actually an article by Roy Osherove entitled, A Language of Commitment.  The main theme of Osherove’s article is the three parts of making a commitment, which are, “you say you’ll do it,” “you mean it,” and “you actually do it.”  Essentially he is speaking to following through with your promises.  Osherove also speaks to signs of noncommitment, such as using words like “need,” “should,” “hope,” “wish,” or “let’s.”  He says that a real commitment follows a structure like, “I will … by …”  At the end of the chapter, Martin summarizes Osherove’s points, and puts it in terms of professionals.  This chapter was pretty straight forward and I can’t say that I disagree with the message.

Martin entitles his fourth chapter “Coding” but if you were hoping to find some code, then you will only find disappointment.  This chapter centers mostly on when you should not write code, how you are probably using bad practice while coding, and how you should mitigate expectations.  Personally, I think a more proper title for this chapter would be “Negative Nancy’s Guide to Why You Suck at Coding.”  First of all, this chapter begins with a section called “Preparedness” but I do not see the relevance to the material in the section.  Martin describes the necessary elements of code, and then he talks about concentration.  He then describes a plethora of different distractions and advises the aspiring professional programmer not to get distracted.  On a side note, I found it interesting that Martin suggests that a programmer should put in eight solid hours a day instead of attempting to code for longer.  I found this interesting because in chapter one he suggests that you should commit at least 60 hours a week to your career.  If you only code for eight hours a day, seven days a week, that only equates to 56 hours.  For someone who claims to be a great professional programmer, I find his basic math skills lacking.

Well, I am now 76 pages into this textbook, only 109 more pages to go.  I’m not saying that this is the worst text I have ever read, and it has certainly given me something to write about, but I am certainly finding The Clean Coder to be far more idealistic than practical.

From the blog cs443 – TayNock's Blog by taynock and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This is the first installment of learning reflection posts for my capstone at WSU.  This week in class we formed groups to work on projects.  I am still figuring out what we will be doing exactly, we are very early in the process, but we started pulling resources.  This week I read up on OpenMRS and AMPATH.  I started reading through this book which I found on the OpenMRS website and gained some knowledge about the background and goals of the project.  As for AMPATH, I perused the website, and gained an understanding as to what they are trying to accomplish.  In all honesty, it seems like OpenMRS and AMPATH are noble endeavors, and I’m excited to get started on our own project.  I suppose the next step is to get together with our group and begin creating our product backlog, and start our first sprint cycle.  Unfortunately, this week was mostly spent on researching what we are getting involved with, and there was little physical progress.  Hopefully, next week will involve more direction and some real progress will be made.

From the blog cs443 – TayNock's Blog by taynock and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This past week I read the first two chapters of The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin.  The first chapter’s main focus is on professionalism.  Martin defines professionalism as a “marker of responsibility and accountability,” (8).  He then proceeds to explain what he means by that statement, and he describes what he believes makes a programmer a nonprofessional.  In chapter two Martin describes in detail an aspect of being a professional.  He stresses the importance of saying “no” when a programmer is asked to complete tasks in unrealistic timeframes.  He provides numerous situations and describes why some ways of handling the situation of saying “no” are better than others.

So I am 43 pages into reading The Clean Coder, and I must say that Martin definitely has a very strong opinion concerning his topic.  To an extent I would say that I find it overboard and at times even condescending.  The thought that an employee is only a professional if he or she would pay ten thousand dollars back to the company for an error just seems unrealistic.  Additionally, I can’t imagine an employee keeping his or her job for very long if he or she kept saying no to their employer when asked to complete an assignment.  I understand that I am oversimplifying Martin’s point, but at the same time, you must make adjustments and compromises in order to fulfill demand, even if that means not testing every piece of code that you write.  Hopefully I find some more realistic information in the later chapters, because as it stands, I find Martin’s writing to be far too idealistic to be useful.

From the blog cs443 – TayNock's Blog by taynock and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I spent this week learning JavaScript and Angular 2. I found a nice website that has video lessons on JavaScript (https://javabrains.io/topics/corejs); I listened to almost all of the videos.

I found learning Angular 2 quite annoying. I have become so used to Java that it is going to take me some more time to really get used to Angular 2. After searching for a while, I found a channel on youtube about Angular 2 that I liked (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6gx4Cwl9DGBYxWxJtLi8c6PGjNKGYGZZ). I watched the first few videos and plan to watch the rest by end of this week.

I also plan to learn TypeScript this week; from what I have learnt TypeScript is a super set of JavaScript and adds features like class based object orientation and type checking to JavaScript and it is also really important in Angular 2.

From the blog CS448 – The blog about software by Sudarshan and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I read the the introduction, chapter 1 and chapter 2 of the The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin. I found the introduction funny because the author basically quit the job he did not like while he was making $7,200 a year and and a few months later got the same job back for $6,800 ! I guess the lesson to learn here is the importance of wisdom.

The second and third chapters were about professionalism and when to say no to something (how to be a professional). Being a professional means that you care about the product you build and take responsibility for any problems that may arise. The author explains that to be a professional you must not create bugs in your software and if you make an error, you must apologize. Never release any code that you know to be faulty. And the software you write must be flexible.

The author also talks about the importance of learning. It our responsibility as professionals to make sure we are marketable. We have constantly to learn and strive to improve ourselves.

I found the second chapter interesting. The author explains why it is important to say no to a request by your boss and why not to use the word try. I think following this idea is hard in practice. What if you boss insist you complete something within a certain time limit (which is not possible)? It is very easy to just comply, but it is hard to say no given the fact that your boss has the authority to fire you. But I guess being a professional is not easy, you have to put the software that you produce over everything else.

From the blog CS448 – The blog about software by Sudarshan and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.