Category Archives: CS@Worcester

Week 0 – Set Up Task 5

Been a hot second since I wrote here, but nonetheless, I’m happy to be back. This week I’ll be taking a look at the project I will be working on all this semester for CS-448, LibreFoodPantry and Thea’s Pantry.

Professor Wurst wanted us to take a look at each project, and find things we found interesting about each. Starting with LibreFoodPantry, I actually chose their Mission statement, because it gave me a lot more insight into this project then I initially had. I had assumed it was specifically a project Worcester State was doing for Thea’s Pantry, but no. It’s actually a project that spans across multiple college campuses, which I found to be very interesting. I am curious to see if this year we will be working with any other colleges also working for LibreFoodPantry.

As for Thea’s Pantry, I chose the Technology tab, because I was curious as to the technology we were using. In specific, I was surprised to find we were working with GitLab again this semester. I have known for awhile now that the industry standard for repositories in GitHub, so I’m interested to learn and know exactly why we are using GitLab over it. I also am happy to see we will be utilizing Docker and MongoDB from previous courses with Professor Wurst.

Overall, looking into these documentation, I am excited to be working on these projects for my Capstone. Here’s to another semester at Worcester State with Professor Wurst!

From the blog CS@Worcester – You're Telling Me A Shrimp Wrote This Code?! by tempurashrimple and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Exploring LibreFoodPantry and Thea’s Pantry

The LibreFoodPantry’s Mission page stood out to me for its dual focus on developing free, open-source software (FOSS) for food pantries and educating students on using tech to address social inequalities like food insecurity. By using coding as a tool for social good, the project transforms classroom learning into real-world impact for example, building inventory systems to help pantries distribute resources more efficiently. I chose this because, as I prepare to contribute until graduation, I want to see how my technical efforts can address community needs. LibreFoodPantry’s mission aligns with my goal to work on projects that prioritize purpose over profit, and it’s motivating to know my contributions at Worcester State could directly support local food pantries.

In Thea’s Pantry’s GitLab repository, I explored the Inclusive Language documentation and was surprised by its integration of the Alex linter—a tool that flags exclusionary terms in documentation, such as gendered language or ableist phrases like “crazy.” This was my first encounter with such a tool. I chose this because it reflects the project’s commitment to inclusivity at every level, ensuring contributors feel welcome. As a student entering the tech field in the future, this practice resonates deeply; it’s a reminder that ethical design isn’t just about functionality but also about creating spaces where diverse voices can thrive.

From the blog CS@Worcester – CodedBear by donna abayon and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

LibreFoodPantry and Thea’s Pantry

For my Software Development Capstone, I will be working on the LibreFoodPantry, a Free Open Source Software project, and more specifically, the Worcester State University food pantry, Thea’s Pantry.

After reading through the LibreFoodPantry website I found it interesting how it mixes Free Open Source Software (FOSS) with a humanitarian project, as I think those two go well together naturally, both being non-profit and for a noble cause. But another part of the LibreFoodPantry program that it also works closely with college students in the computer science field. This is another way that the entire structure of the LibreFoodPantry helps, because it allows student to learn from real software that is used in the real world and gets them involved with humanitarian causes within their major.

Going further into the specific system I will be working on, I read about Thea’s Pantry. What I found to be the most interesting thing is how the whole project is organized. With a lot of different people working on the same software and making different changes and using it for different purposes, there can be a lot of things that then don’t work with each other or become incompatible or cause communication issues. The entire project is organized in a way to allow many different iterations to exist without coming into conflict and being adaptable.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Computer Science Blog by dzona1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

LFP Blog Post

One thing I found interesting from the LibreFoodPantry was found in the “Values” section and it was the link to FOSSisms. A FOSSism is a maxim for free and open source culture, and these are used to explain the benefits of open source values in computer science education. The article lists 16 of these. The most important FOSSism is the first one listed. It references “it’s all about community” and this is most definitely the entire point of open source software. Incorporating students with open source projects involves a lot more than simply working on a software project, it requires getting involved in a community of like-minded individuals who are all contributing to the project. These projects are mostly contributing to a greater social good. I chose to write about this because community is a huge part of the workforce and emphasizing this in open source projects is really important for effective collaboration.

One thing I found interesting from the Thea’s Pantry was the “Architecture” section. If we as students in this capstone class/project are going to be contributing to this software, it is definitely important to understand its architecture and all of its individual components. It was interesting to read that the client solution is composed of systems such as:

  • GuestInfoSystem
  • InventorySystem
  • ReportingSystem
  • IAMSystem (Third-party)
  • EventSystem (Third-party),

and that each of these systems has a multitude of features. The integration and deployment diagrams were a good piece of visualization to help understand the scope of the project. I chose to write about this because I recognized the importance of understanding the architecture of a project that one is working on.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Shawn In Tech by Shawn Budzinski and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

LibreFoodPantry and Thea’s Pantry

During this semester I’m taking my capstone in which we are working on a project for Thea’s Pantry. Before starting this project however, we had to take a look at what we would be doing a project on. This blog post is about some of the things that I found interesting and useful about the two pantries mentioned in the title.

The first thing I’m going to talk about is LibreFoodPantry. LibreFoodPantry is a community building free and open source software for food pantries. The website for this community contains six main sections that I read. These include their mission, values (such as Agile principles), code of conduct, licensing, acknowledgements, and coordinating committee. The section I found to be most interesting was the mission. They state “Our mission is to expand a community of students and faculty across multiple institutions who believe software can be used to help society. We strive to support local food pantries with quality, adaptable, free and open source software (FOSS) to help them serve their guests. Through learning opportunities within FOSS food pantry projects, we provide students with the perspective that computing can be used for social good.” I chose to talk about this because I think its really kind that an entire community has been developed and continues to work on projects for social good and to help others.

The second thing I’m going to talk about is Thea’s Pantry. Thea’s Pantry is Worcester State’s own personal food pantry. Within the README file of the Documentation repository, there are five main sections. These sections are User Stories, Architecture, Technology, Workflow, and Release Process. The section that I found to be most useful is the Architecture section. I found this section to be most useful because it describes the ReportingSystem and what the different subsections use for components and queues. On top of that, it shows the diagram for the ReportingSystem Standalone Integration Test which I think is helpful for anyone who wants to understand the architecture.

Overall, I’m really excited to start working on a project with Thea’s Pantry and I hope that I’m able to help make a difference.

From the blog CS@Worcester – One pixel at a time by gizmo10203 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Intro Blog Post for CS-443

Hello, I’m Antonio and this will be the blog that I’ll be using for Quality Assurance Testing where all my blogs will be posted and hopefully read by someone. Thank you for reading.

From the blog CS@Worcester – aRomeoDev by aromeo4f978d012d4 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

LibreFoodPantry

Reading through the LibreFoodPantry website, it actually surprised me that when I looked through the Coordinating Committee section I saw that there were actually several other colleges that seem to be working on this project and possibly contributing to it. This to me gave a bit of a reality to the wider scope of the project, obviously the goal of this project is to reach as many people as possible with the help they need through FOSS projects and to help students see the positives of contributing projects such as these. For me this was just interesting to see the project already have a somewhat far-reaching impact.

From Thea’s Pantry I thought how openly transparent all the documentation would be and how thorough it is with every aspect of the software. Though the most interesting part for me was the ID-Scanner documentation. Seeing the UML charts outlining how it works was pretty interesting, as my part of the project with my group is working on Login and Authentication so this will potentially be valuable for getting it to work properly with other systems. But otherwise seeing the user stories was also very interesting as it seems like it will help immensely to write the code in the right direction.

From the blog CS@Worcester – aRomeoDev by aromeo4f978d012d4 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Introductory Post

Hello World!

From the blog CS@Worcester – CS Today by Guilherme Salazar Almeida Nazareth and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Intro to Software Quality Assurance and Testing

This blog will document my learning experience for CS-443, both inside and outside of the classroom. My goal is to reflect on my progress and provide a space to explore how the concepts learned in class apply to real-world scenarios.

From the blog CS@Worcester – CodedBear by donna abayon and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS-443 Tasks 4 and 5

This post is for tasks 4 and 5 for CS-443 for Spring 2025. Since there is no #blogs-and-podcasts channel in the Discord, I am just posting them here.

Task 4

The blog I found relating to the content for this course is https://blog.qasource.com/. This blog talks about a lot of quality assurance methodologies and best practices. I chose this blog because one of my colleagues actually recommended this close to the beginning of my career, and I have seen different posts on it over the years.

Task 5

The podcast I found relating to the content for this course is https://www.garymcgraw.com/technology/silver-bullet-podcast/. This podcast talks specifically about penetration testing and different security practices. I chose a podcast with this focus because pentesting is one of my areas of expertise, and I listen to this podcast whenever a new episode comes out.

From the blog Mr. Lancer 987's Blog by Mr. Lancer 987 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.