Category Archives: CS@Worcester

REST API Understood

Throughout the year we have used REST API in class more and more. Through the microservices kit activities I found more interest in the use of REST API. I sought out more information on them to expand my knowledge through an article on REST APIs. The article I found is REST APIs: How They Work and What You Need to Know by Jamie Juviler

The article begins by explaining the importance of REST APIs. They are a widely used framework that allows applications to communicate over the web by following a set of design principles. The article explains it is used to enable data sharing and integrations between systems, allowing software to interact with external services, improving functionality and user experience. The article continues by explaining how they work. By allowing clients to make requests to a server for resources, the server then responds with the current state of the requested resource, usually in a standard format like JSON. The API can also allow clients to modify or add resources on the server. The article explains there are six key principles to know:

  1. Client-Server Separation: REST APIs separate the client and server, meaning that the client can interact with the server without needing to know how the server works internally.
  2. Uniform Interface: RESTful APIs require a standardized way of interacting, usually through these HTTP methods: GET: Retrieve data. POST: Create new data. DELETE: Delete data. PUT: Update existing data.
  3. Stateless: Each request to the server is independent and must contain all the information necessary for the server to fulfill the request.
  4. Layered System: In a REST API, there can be intermediary layers (e.g., security layers, load balancers, or caching layers) between the client and the server. These layers should not impact the client-server communication and should be transparent to the client.
  5. Cacheable: Responses from the server may be cacheable, meaning that the client can store the data locally and avoid repeated requests for the same resource.
  6. Code on Demand (Optional): This optional feature allows servers to send executable code (like JavaScript) to the client, enabling the client to execute this code locally.

The article then explains the benefits of REST APIs, which include flexibility, scalability, interoperability, simplicity, and cost-effectiveness. Juviler then explains how to set up REST APIs with an admin and the article concludes with some examples of the use of REST APIs. 

Rest API has become something very important in class and because of recent assignments I wanted to learn more. Through this blog I understand REST more thoroughly, and the reasons for using it. I understand its feasibility and use for microservices back-end architecture as seen in Thea’s Pantry.

Source:

https://blog.hubspot.com/website/what-is-rest-api

From the blog CS@Worcester – WSU CS Blog: Ben Gelineau by Ben Gelineau and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Docker: Diving In

After understanding the team aspects of software development, I wanted to shift focus to the tools at a team’s disposal. In conjunction with version control software, development environments become among the most important tools at a tem’s disposal. In projects outside of class I am working closely with docker, and we briefly utilized it to prepare for CS-448 capstone. I wanted to spend more time learning about these development environments. To do so I found an article on the basics of understanding Docker. The article’s title is In-depth Docker by Walter Code

This blog post begins by outlining what it contains. The article expands on configuration management, Docker’s technical components, and Dockerfile commands. Walter explains that configuration management builds on Docker’s layered image management, which addresses issues with traditional “golden image” models that often lead to unmanageable images. Docker’s approach allows for faster iteration and better flexibility. The article continues to highlight some key technical components such as isolation of filesystems, processes, and networks, and resource management via cgroups. Docker is extremely flexible and can run on any x64 host with a modern Linux kernel, and is compatible with OS X and Windows via virtual machines. The post also introduces Docker’s user interfaces, such as Shipyard, Portainer, and Kitematic, which help with container management. Walter also touches on essential Dockerfile commands, like ADD, CMD, and RUN, which are covered to help users configure containers. The article wraps up by discussing Docker’s filesystem layers that allow changes to be applied to a writable layer while keeping underlying read-only layers intact. Additionally, Docker Compose enables users to manage multi-container application stacks, while Docker Swarm helps scale workloads across container clusters. The post finishes by highlighting Docker’s simplicity, security, and rapid deployment, making it a compelling tool for developers, with more practical examples to follow in future posts.

This article helped me better understand how Docker can be essential for teams. It also provided me with more knowledge to aid me in my personal projects that utilize docker. This is a key step for me in understanding how best to work with a team with these tools. What I found most helpful was an explanation of how Docker’s configuration management could be used, and why docker compose is so useful. Next in my blog I will cover more strategies or tools to help me better function in a team for software development. 

Source:https://waltercode.medium.com/in-depth-docker-faa0c4dd9a63

From the blog CS@Worcester – WSU CS Blog: Ben Gelineau by Ben Gelineau and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Rest API

This week I wanted to blog about Rest API. The repository that we have been working on in class has a decently large backend that uses a wide variety of methods to act as a good example and introduction of Rest API. I wanted to look into it and try to find more examples to look at and get a better understanding by looking at implementations that either had a different format or was used for different purposes. While looking I found a blog that detailed the documentation that developers have made a standard to put with code that aids in understanding.

The article starts off with some common mistakes that can really decrease the effectiveness of your documentation such as not enough examples, the lack of English explanations, and unmaintained documentation. As aspect that the article touches upon is that the documentation should be written to be understood by entry level developers, which makes sense as your implementation shouldn’t be opaque to the users. The article provides a survey taken by web developers that ranked the most desired features of API documentation, and ranks examples, status, and error messages in the top five. This makes sense as these are some of the things that contribute most to being able to understand already existing code. Spec-driven development is also explained here and talks about using software like Swagger to keep track of and simplify your code to easily understand how the program uses the data. The blog also puts emphasis on the industry standards that should be used, and it goes a long way to help users get a grasp of new code when they start to look at new projects.

This post was helpful in understanding how to read other repositories of API, especially as it was written in the form of the writer’s or maintainer’s point of view. Although I have not yet and don’t plan to yet, write and document an API designed by myself, this write-up was equally descriptive for explaining how to read the documentation. I think that this is an extremely useful skill to have because, like in our class assignments, we won’t always be designing something from the ground up and so we need to understand what is already there. The web page had lots of pictures to illustrate the point they were making and to provide examples. It always helps to learn more of these industry standards to be better prepared for real world or out of classroom applications and strengthen your skills as a programmer.

Original Blog Post – How to Write API Documentation

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

Clean code and reality.

 

The
article examines the question, “is clean code by Robert Martin still matters?” From
author’s 16-year coding experience, he writes about reality in writing clean
code and its criticism. He acknowledges that t in the end meeting the deadline
with functional and bug free code is more important then elegant code following
the principle of clean code. However, he argues in the end as a developer,
trying to integrate small aspects of clean code into your code base is going to
make your skill improve as an engineer in the long run even if many people will
not care about it.

I selected this
article as it addresses some uncertainty that I had with clean code. All the
code I have written feels like I got pressure to deliver functional code as
quickly as possible and now I’m supposed to write elegant, maintainable code so
I wanted to see the real live example from experience if clean code was that necessary.
The author’s real-world experience and practical approach toward the subject made
it an interesting topic to delve into deeper.

This article showed
that clean code is not something you have to write all the thing following to
it, it is about finding the right balance between quality code following the
clean code and functional code. I feel like clean code still matters in a bit
as we want to write a code in time but needs to make it modular to be abled to be
easily refactored for later uses. Not only that, this article advice to start
small feels realistic and something I can do to grow as a programmer.  The hierarchy of what matters in the software
part will be my checklist in the future as it is the basic outline of how the
code needs to be structured. When writing code, the working code always comes first,
then make it without bug and if there is bug, you should be able to be fixed
easily then I will try to add instance of small parts of clean code in. I want
to make the code a bit modular because I spent hours trying to refactor code sometimes
and finding which part of the code went wrong took a long time because my code
was always a mess. Therefore, I feel like idea of clean code by Robert martin
is not dead but only small part of it is still alive to become better
programmer. As the most important thing for programming is to make software
that is easy to maintain, adapt and scale.

 

Article
link :
https://tommcfarlin.com/who-cares-about-clean-code/

 

From the blog Sung Jin's CS Devlopemnt Blog by Unknown and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Clean code and reality.

 

The
article examines the question, “is clean code by Robert Martin still matters?” From
author’s 16-year coding experience, he writes about reality in writing clean
code and its criticism. He acknowledges that t in the end meeting the deadline
with functional and bug free code is more important then elegant code following
the principle of clean code. However, he argues in the end as a developer,
trying to integrate small aspects of clean code into your code base is going to
make your skill improve as an engineer in the long run even if many people will
not care about it.

I selected this
article as it addresses some uncertainty that I had with clean code. All the
code I have written feels like I got pressure to deliver functional code as
quickly as possible and now I’m supposed to write elegant, maintainable code so
I wanted to see the real live example from experience if clean code was that necessary.
The author’s real-world experience and practical approach toward the subject made
it an interesting topic to delve into deeper.

This article showed
that clean code is not something you have to write all the thing following to
it, it is about finding the right balance between quality code following the
clean code and functional code. I feel like clean code still matters in a bit
as we want to write a code in time but needs to make it modular to be abled to be
easily refactored for later uses. Not only that, this article advice to start
small feels realistic and something I can do to grow as a programmer.  The hierarchy of what matters in the software
part will be my checklist in the future as it is the basic outline of how the
code needs to be structured. When writing code, the working code always comes first,
then make it without bug and if there is bug, you should be able to be fixed
easily then I will try to add instance of small parts of clean code in. I want
to make the code a bit modular because I spent hours trying to refactor code sometimes
and finding which part of the code went wrong took a long time because my code
was always a mess. Therefore, I feel like idea of clean code by Robert martin
is not dead but only small part of it is still alive to become better
programmer. As the most important thing for programming is to make software
that is easy to maintain, adapt and scale.

 

Article
link :
https://tommcfarlin.com/who-cares-about-clean-code/

 

From the blog Sung Jin's CS Devlopemnt Blog by Unknown and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Clean code and reality.

 

The
article examines the question, “is clean code by Robert Martin still matters?” From
author’s 16-year coding experience, he writes about reality in writing clean
code and its criticism. He acknowledges that t in the end meeting the deadline
with functional and bug free code is more important then elegant code following
the principle of clean code. However, he argues in the end as a developer,
trying to integrate small aspects of clean code into your code base is going to
make your skill improve as an engineer in the long run even if many people will
not care about it.

I selected this
article as it addresses some uncertainty that I had with clean code. All the
code I have written feels like I got pressure to deliver functional code as
quickly as possible and now I’m supposed to write elegant, maintainable code so
I wanted to see the real live example from experience if clean code was that necessary.
The author’s real-world experience and practical approach toward the subject made
it an interesting topic to delve into deeper.

This article showed
that clean code is not something you have to write all the thing following to
it, it is about finding the right balance between quality code following the
clean code and functional code. I feel like clean code still matters in a bit
as we want to write a code in time but needs to make it modular to be abled to be
easily refactored for later uses. Not only that, this article advice to start
small feels realistic and something I can do to grow as a programmer.  The hierarchy of what matters in the software
part will be my checklist in the future as it is the basic outline of how the
code needs to be structured. When writing code, the working code always comes first,
then make it without bug and if there is bug, you should be able to be fixed
easily then I will try to add instance of small parts of clean code in. I want
to make the code a bit modular because I spent hours trying to refactor code sometimes
and finding which part of the code went wrong took a long time because my code
was always a mess. Therefore, I feel like idea of clean code by Robert martin
is not dead but only small part of it is still alive to become better
programmer. As the most important thing for programming is to make software
that is easy to maintain, adapt and scale.

 

Article
link :
https://tommcfarlin.com/who-cares-about-clean-code/

 

From the blog Sung Jin's CS Devlopemnt Blog by Unknown and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Clean code and reality.

 

The
article examines the question, “is clean code by Robert Martin still matters?” From
author’s 16-year coding experience, he writes about reality in writing clean
code and its criticism. He acknowledges that t in the end meeting the deadline
with functional and bug free code is more important then elegant code following
the principle of clean code. However, he argues in the end as a developer,
trying to integrate small aspects of clean code into your code base is going to
make your skill improve as an engineer in the long run even if many people will
not care about it.

I selected this
article as it addresses some uncertainty that I had with clean code. All the
code I have written feels like I got pressure to deliver functional code as
quickly as possible and now I’m supposed to write elegant, maintainable code so
I wanted to see the real live example from experience if clean code was that necessary.
The author’s real-world experience and practical approach toward the subject made
it an interesting topic to delve into deeper.

This article showed
that clean code is not something you have to write all the thing following to
it, it is about finding the right balance between quality code following the
clean code and functional code. I feel like clean code still matters in a bit
as we want to write a code in time but needs to make it modular to be abled to be
easily refactored for later uses. Not only that, this article advice to start
small feels realistic and something I can do to grow as a programmer.  The hierarchy of what matters in the software
part will be my checklist in the future as it is the basic outline of how the
code needs to be structured. When writing code, the working code always comes first,
then make it without bug and if there is bug, you should be able to be fixed
easily then I will try to add instance of small parts of clean code in. I want
to make the code a bit modular because I spent hours trying to refactor code sometimes
and finding which part of the code went wrong took a long time because my code
was always a mess. Therefore, I feel like idea of clean code by Robert martin
is not dead but only small part of it is still alive to become better
programmer. As the most important thing for programming is to make software
that is easy to maintain, adapt and scale.

 

Article
link :
https://tommcfarlin.com/who-cares-about-clean-code/

 

From the blog Sung Jin's CS Devlopemnt Blog by Unknown and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Clean code and reality.

 

The
article examines the question, “is clean code by Robert Martin still matters?” From
author’s 16-year coding experience, he writes about reality in writing clean
code and its criticism. He acknowledges that t in the end meeting the deadline
with functional and bug free code is more important then elegant code following
the principle of clean code. However, he argues in the end as a developer,
trying to integrate small aspects of clean code into your code base is going to
make your skill improve as an engineer in the long run even if many people will
not care about it.

I selected this
article as it addresses some uncertainty that I had with clean code. All the
code I have written feels like I got pressure to deliver functional code as
quickly as possible and now I’m supposed to write elegant, maintainable code so
I wanted to see the real live example from experience if clean code was that necessary.
The author’s real-world experience and practical approach toward the subject made
it an interesting topic to delve into deeper.

This article showed
that clean code is not something you have to write all the thing following to
it, it is about finding the right balance between quality code following the
clean code and functional code. I feel like clean code still matters in a bit
as we want to write a code in time but needs to make it modular to be abled to be
easily refactored for later uses. Not only that, this article advice to start
small feels realistic and something I can do to grow as a programmer.  The hierarchy of what matters in the software
part will be my checklist in the future as it is the basic outline of how the
code needs to be structured. When writing code, the working code always comes first,
then make it without bug and if there is bug, you should be able to be fixed
easily then I will try to add instance of small parts of clean code in. I want
to make the code a bit modular because I spent hours trying to refactor code sometimes
and finding which part of the code went wrong took a long time because my code
was always a mess. Therefore, I feel like idea of clean code by Robert martin
is not dead but only small part of it is still alive to become better
programmer. As the most important thing for programming is to make software
that is easy to maintain, adapt and scale.

 

Article
link :
https://tommcfarlin.com/who-cares-about-clean-code/

 

From the blog Sung Jin's CS Devlopemnt Blog by Unknown and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Clean code and reality.

 

The
article examines the question, “is clean code by Robert Martin still matters?” From
author’s 16-year coding experience, he writes about reality in writing clean
code and its criticism. He acknowledges that t in the end meeting the deadline
with functional and bug free code is more important then elegant code following
the principle of clean code. However, he argues in the end as a developer,
trying to integrate small aspects of clean code into your code base is going to
make your skill improve as an engineer in the long run even if many people will
not care about it.

I selected this
article as it addresses some uncertainty that I had with clean code. All the
code I have written feels like I got pressure to deliver functional code as
quickly as possible and now I’m supposed to write elegant, maintainable code so
I wanted to see the real live example from experience if clean code was that necessary.
The author’s real-world experience and practical approach toward the subject made
it an interesting topic to delve into deeper.

This article showed
that clean code is not something you have to write all the thing following to
it, it is about finding the right balance between quality code following the
clean code and functional code. I feel like clean code still matters in a bit
as we want to write a code in time but needs to make it modular to be abled to be
easily refactored for later uses. Not only that, this article advice to start
small feels realistic and something I can do to grow as a programmer.  The hierarchy of what matters in the software
part will be my checklist in the future as it is the basic outline of how the
code needs to be structured. When writing code, the working code always comes first,
then make it without bug and if there is bug, you should be able to be fixed
easily then I will try to add instance of small parts of clean code in. I want
to make the code a bit modular because I spent hours trying to refactor code sometimes
and finding which part of the code went wrong took a long time because my code
was always a mess. Therefore, I feel like idea of clean code by Robert martin
is not dead but only small part of it is still alive to become better
programmer. As the most important thing for programming is to make software
that is easy to maintain, adapt and scale.

 

Article
link :
https://tommcfarlin.com/who-cares-about-clean-code/

 

From the blog Sung Jin's CS Devlopemnt Blog by Unknown and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Clean code and reality.

 

The
article examines the question, “is clean code by Robert Martin still matters?” From
author’s 16-year coding experience, he writes about reality in writing clean
code and its criticism. He acknowledges that t in the end meeting the deadline
with functional and bug free code is more important then elegant code following
the principle of clean code. However, he argues in the end as a developer,
trying to integrate small aspects of clean code into your code base is going to
make your skill improve as an engineer in the long run even if many people will
not care about it.

I selected this
article as it addresses some uncertainty that I had with clean code. All the
code I have written feels like I got pressure to deliver functional code as
quickly as possible and now I’m supposed to write elegant, maintainable code so
I wanted to see the real live example from experience if clean code was that necessary.
The author’s real-world experience and practical approach toward the subject made
it an interesting topic to delve into deeper.

This article showed
that clean code is not something you have to write all the thing following to
it, it is about finding the right balance between quality code following the
clean code and functional code. I feel like clean code still matters in a bit
as we want to write a code in time but needs to make it modular to be abled to be
easily refactored for later uses. Not only that, this article advice to start
small feels realistic and something I can do to grow as a programmer.  The hierarchy of what matters in the software
part will be my checklist in the future as it is the basic outline of how the
code needs to be structured. When writing code, the working code always comes first,
then make it without bug and if there is bug, you should be able to be fixed
easily then I will try to add instance of small parts of clean code in. I want
to make the code a bit modular because I spent hours trying to refactor code sometimes
and finding which part of the code went wrong took a long time because my code
was always a mess. Therefore, I feel like idea of clean code by Robert martin
is not dead but only small part of it is still alive to become better
programmer. As the most important thing for programming is to make software
that is easy to maintain, adapt and scale.

 

Article
link :
https://tommcfarlin.com/who-cares-about-clean-code/

 

From the blog Sung Jin's CS Devlopemnt Blog by Unknown and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.