Category Archives: Development

Working as a Front end developer

Now that I have heard about people’s experiences working on the back end, I was curious about people’s experiences working on the front end. Reading personal experiences taught me a lot about working on the back end. You can learn a lot and avoid mistakes by seeing others take similar paths. Also, it can prepare you for problems that you may face in the future. Mistakes are inevitable but being able to adapt or being able to recognize it and fix it goes a long way. Working on projects especially those that have to do with coding errors is always a step away. You can try to get a step ahead on these problems by seeing other people work and implementing it on your stuff. That is why I found an article about working as a front-end developer. These articles are very engaging and always give me a new perspective.

This article is written by Selim Enes who has done freelance work in the past but is currently working as a developer. When he first started he was working on small things like CSS edits until he proved himself. One of his major projects was a blog project where he had to create the display of the UI. He was involved in all operations after 2 months. When he proved to the team that his code wouldn’t crash the project he gained access to the company’s main project. The company’s main project entailed a webinar application that used technologies like WebSocket. One thing that made him know he was going in the right direction was being able to develop features like push-to-talk by himself. There are some negatives to his work with his boss being very hasty on projects. He believes all tasks are urgent and make some work very stressful. Plus with the recent economic regression, he doesn’t believe he will be able to get a raise anytime soon. He has learned to have a full-stack blog project for himself and has an e-commerce project his about to start working on. He is working while also building his portfolio outside of work.

Reading this article was very insightful. It made sense that when you first start working for a company they won’t give you the keys to everything just yet. They ease you up into it until you have gained their trust. Working on his portfolio outside of work motivated me to do the same too. You can sometimes become complacent at your job because you have a living but you shouldn’t. You should always try to improve and hope to find better opportunities elsewhere

View at Medium.com
https://medium.com/@sellimenes/1-year-experience-as-a-junior-front-end-developer-39766fad5c34

From the blog CS@Worcester – DCO by dcastillo360 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Software Capstone: Project Progress

In our class, we are working on a project that has to do with the food pantry on campus. We are designing software in the Java language in hopes that we can create a web based database solution for our pantry.

So far, we have been setting up the basic structure of our Gitlab repository and communication methods. We use Trello as an online cork-board showing our progress across each of the activities we must accomplish in designing the software. We use Slack for our main channel of communication. Besides that, Gitlab takes care of the file hosting and in accounting for the different versions of our code.

We have set up a Maven project with basic test code and a few other files pertinent to the project. Otherwise, progress is moving along slowly but steadily.
Currently, I am working on implementing test code to parse JSON files (read and write to them to be more specific.)

I will write more as time goes on, for now I hope you have a good rest of your day or night.

SMR

From the blog CS@Worcester – Sean Raleigh's CS Blog by sraleigh62 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Software Capstone: Apprenticeship Patterns Post 1

Hello again readers.

So, what is a pattern as is described in the book Apprenticeship Patterns by Adewale Oshineye and Dave Hoover? Patterns are ways in which we program or otherwise do our work/solve problems repeatedly. When applied correctly, patterns allow us to easily overcome many problems/obstacles we face in our jobs and personal hobbies.

The patterns in the book make their approach based on the context, problems, and possible solutions. “The context sets the mood… problem statement identifies the problem being solved by the entirety of the pattern. The solution usually begins with a one sentence resolution for the problem…” (Pattern Form, Apprenticeship Patterns)

Developing a pattern allows for the mass production of programs, buildings, and other structures, whether physical or metaphysical. It is intended to further the abilities of the novice to moderately advanced programmer. One model/pattern for programming is using a master node and slave nodes: the master node controls what slave nodes do (which instructions the slave nodes undergo.)

 

This book was written for “software apprentices” (as put forth by the author.)  The three tiers of the programmer go from apprentice, to journeyman, to a master craftsmen. The apprentice believe that there is always a better way to do what they are doing. The journeyman focuses inwardly as well as on teamwork and connecting with others. The master does this all as well as attempt to move the industry forward.

 

On to the review of this pattern. I find taking instructions from a singular source and running processes on many smaller sources of computing power to be interesting: you can get vastly more processing power by adding many slave or sub-nodes to a master or dominative node. I haven’t really found that it changes how I will approach programming in the future but I may look back on this way of programming for reference. Finally, I have no disagreements or other takeaways from the first chapter and pattern of this book.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my first post about Apprenticeship Patterns, I will see you next time.

 

-SMR

From the blog CS@Worcester – Sean Raleigh's CS Blog by sraleigh62 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Software Capstone: First Day of Class

We started our course today; we have been introduced to the CATME project  (Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness.)

We are going to be using CATME to build our teams and for our professor to be able to survey our responses to questionnaires. It will be useful for us to find a better placement in our seperate groups and to figure out which person would be most suited for which kind of task.

For communication between team members, we will be using Slack (the programmers go-to team messaging and update system.) This will allow us to share files and keep in touch with the people we will be working with.

 

Regardless, it will be interesting to work in larger groups than I’ve done previously. Furthermore, we will be working with actual institutions of health and programming systems for places such as food banks. My next post should be focusing on some of the text we will be reading (articles and books primarily.) I will most likely be reviewing these texts and giving my interpretation of them.

I look forward to my next posting.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Sean Raleigh's CS Blog by sraleigh62 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

iOS Development

I recently undertook an independent study in iOS development at Worcester State University with a few of my classmates. Overall it was quite the experience. Objective C is a fairly straight-forward, object oriented language so it was fairly nice to work with, but what made it really great was Xcode. I’m not usually one to drink the Apple kool-aid but they hit the nail on the head as far as iOS development in Xcode. Everything was amazing. Since the development is completely proprietary (shame on you Apple, shame) development in Xcode is extraordinarily nice. The only real drawback is that you need to own a Mac of some sort to develop for iOS. I can’t say this is 100% true anymore, however, since VMWare now has OS X support. Alas I cannot afford a VMWare license and my free license through the college expired early this year.

Overall it was an awesome experience which not only taught me about iOS, Xcode, and Objective C, but also gave me some applied experience with group development and lessened my disdain for all things Apple.

From the blog The Mind of Mattamizer » WSU CS by mattamizer and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.