Next week, my second Sprint will start. My team worked really well last Sprint that we met all the initial objectives; however, the context was we reimplemented something that we’ve already known or heard about, which only needs a bit more searching in order to fully commit the work. This second Sprint we are going to have lots more “abstract” topics, materials that we weren’t familiar with, so I expect we might get frustrated, overwhelmed when we come to it.

This situation might somewhat be similar to what I’ve read in the “Expose Your Ignorance” section, the only difference is that I’m not in a nine to five working environment. Per description from the book, we have been brought in some projects that we are unfamiliar with some of the required technologies; but team members believe that we can deliver because we have a deep understanding of the business domain or some other aspect of the technology stack being used in a team, or perhaps we are the only person available to do the job. In my view, learning and implementing what the team needs while carrying their expectations is difficult, especially when it is something that we have no experience in.

Finding myself falling into this issue in no time, I might consider taking the solution written in the book which is to show my teammates that the learning process is part of delivering software. Therefore, knowing how to learn the technology effectively is important because I should know which part of my current project will need this and go straight to documentation with relevant information on it. Furthermore, asking questions, instead of hiding our issues, exposes it to everyone in the team because no one will be annoyed when we show them what we cannot do, instead, not telling them that you are having problems is what keeps the team behind.

Luckily, I consider myself a bit “figurative” when it comes to asking questions since I don’t mind asking anything that I didn’t understand. Compared to myself 3 years ago, it’s a huge difference as I was that shy guy hiding my weaknesses, I find learning is much more efficient when I can ask everyone what I don’t know, of course, after a period of time thinking and testing and implementing. Having questions is a good practice, but it doesn’t mean that we should ask without already researching it.

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

For this week’s blog post, I have decided to look at the apprenticeship pattern “The White Belt”. This chapter talks about how you have gained a deep understanding of your first language and have become confident. However, you are struggling to learn new things and it has become more difficult to learn new skills. The main idea of this chapter is to wear a white belt and forget everything you have been taught thus far and learn from someone with a blackbelt. Dave H. Hoover & Adewale Oshineye, the authors of the book, say on this, “Wearing the white belt is based on the realization that while the black belt knows the way, the white belt has no choice but to learn the way”. (Dave H. Hoover & Adewale Oshineye). As discussed in the text, when you take this approach in learning some new material this will accelerate your learning process tremendously. When you take this step towards ignorance, you can express yourself idiomatically and gain a far better understanding of your new knowledge. This way when you consider both what you learned and your old knowledge you have developed productive insights in both fields.

What I found interesting about this pattern was that it’s like what we learned in the chapter “Your First Language”. In that chapter it mentioned finding a main language but not forgetting about what you learned in the past. With this chapter we can apply both knowledges and expand on our main language. By being able to take a step back you can develop your skills in a way that I didn’t eve think about. Now knowing this knowledge, it has made me rec consider what I would be doing out in the real world at my profession. If presented with a problem that I have no past knowledge about, instead of trying to guess what the solution to it would be I can ask someone who knows, a.k.a a blackbelt, and expand my knowledge of the subject. With everything I Have learned I both chapters, this gets me excited to go out into the world and gain more knowledge to become a “blackbelt”.

Book: Apprenticeship Patterns, Dave H. Hoover & Adewale Oshineye

From the blog CS@worcester – Michale Friedrich by mikefriedrich1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For this week’s blog post, I have decided to look at the apprenticeship pattern “Your Fist Language”. The idea of this pattern is when you first start your programming journey. This is when you only know one or tow languages. The main concept of this chapter is to isolate what langue you would like to use as your main language. According to Dave H. Hoover and Adewale Oshineye, the authors of the book, they say on this, “Pick a language. Become fluent in it. For the next few years this will be the main language you use to solve problems, as well as the default skill you hone whenever you are practicing. Making this choice is a challenge. It is important that you carefully weigh the options, as this is the foundation upon which your early career will be built.” (Dave H. Hoover & Adewale Oshineye).

When first reading about this pattern, it really grabbed my attention. At Worcester State we learn an abundance of different languages to be able to be prepared for the outside world. However, something that has always been a question for me is “What language do I stick with?”. What was cool about this chapter was that it said to have a main language under your belt, but it never said to toss aside the other languages. As an example, they talked about a job requiring a specific language to be able to be hired there. Rather than disregarding the job and looking for something else, they suggest making a toy application to learn a basic understanding of that language. Some of these toy programs will involve a problem to solve. Unlike a simple “Hello World” application, solving a problem will give you a more in-depth dive of the language. Another good thing to add to your toy application is a test class. Test classes always help ensure that what you are coding is spitting out the correct information.

With this chapter in the book, I agree with everything that they are saying about your first language. I loved how they talked about having a min langue but not disregarding the other languages you have learned or will learn.  It also made me consider more what will be my main langue when I go out into the field and what language I’m willing to put more research into.

Book: Apprenticeship Patterns, Dave H. Hoover & Adewale Oshineye

From the blog CS@worcester – Michale Friedrich by mikefriedrich1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Months ago, I found myself standing in “The Deep End” since I wasn’t able to land any internship before graduating this year. The situation was exactly the same as how they described in the book, I needed to grow more skills, my confidence, and my portfolio of successful work, I needed to challenge myself with bigger works, projects, complex tasks, and teams, etc. The YouTube algorithm even made my situation worse by showing people about my age are “better” coders than me in my opinion. I was afraid that I did not do “enough”.

 Currently, what I really felt at that time was envious, seeing people better than me virtually is rough but seeing people who I know landed works while I carried them through classes is overwhelming. My resume, my ability, my confidence, all of them were kind of irrelevant at that point. I created an invisible time limit for myself to be successful, to this point, I still think there are pros and cons to doing it, the risk could be high but I take it.

Later, exactly in how they advise the action, I should instead jump into working on projects that I did not do to create a time limit for it, I’m willing to take more work than anyone in the team and fulfill my responsibilities to not only build my portfolio but also my skills and my confidence. Then, after a while, I will analyze my set of skills fit to what role in the industry and pick the right opportunity based on it.

Besides, when this post is online, I’m currently handling an internship and a capstone project in which I volunteered to be the Scrum master that instead does not make me feel overwhelmed but motivated, as I am learning new materials every day.

In conclusion, it likes how The Deep End was described in vol. 15 of “Diary of the Wimpy Kid: The Deep End”, which follows Greg Heffley’s summer story, a dramatic summer yielded great memories, things could be tough initially, but if I keep continuing on this track, hopefully, the result will be what I aimed.

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

Self-learning is one important quality of any programmer; however, self-learning is not always useful since the learner might not know what is waiting for them and if their approach is good or not. In this case, every learner needs mentors, those who already achieved what we are working on or at least, they have deeper knowledge about the topic that we are learning.

“Whether a beginner starts out with a training course or is self-taught, the first step on the path to software craftsmanship is finding a craftsman to apprentice himself to”

–Pete McBreen, Software Craftsmanship, p.96

From my own experience, I find this statement can’t be more accurate as I find myself learning more productive when I have mentors to show me what I should do compared to learning by myself. However, as in the book illustrated, as an apprentice, it can be difficult to tell who is truly a master craftsman. Therefore, an apprentice should follow a set of mentors that each one will show them a bit of a huge picture. And the set of mentors here counts not only “real” people who we should have already considered them as our mentors to learn, our friends and our professor, but also the active community we could find online to exchange information with people on it.

Besides, according to what was written in the book, an apprentice shouldn’t expect their mentors to know everything and get disappointed if mentors don’t know what we are seeking for as the current mentors could be other’s apprentice, we are all walking on a long road. Because our field is huge, a person who can guide us through 10 in-built React hooks may not be able to show you how to design the API route and vice versa, these twos are completely different topics and what we probably need is to master a specific set of skills that we desired; but it’s obviously the more we know, the higher opportunities we’ll have.

In conclusion, what I learned from this chapter is that I should find a community and actively communicate with other members there. Luckily, I found myself on a discord channel of one of the biggest Vietnamese tech forums, J2Team, having a community of developers exchanging lots of quality contents.

Now, I should consider posting my first message here and seeing where it will lead me to. 

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