Category Archives: life

Sprint Retrospective: Learning to love Group Projects

Hi Debug Ducker here, and I just recently finished my first sprint with a group project. I have to say it went well, better than I expected. This coming from someone who has had poor experiences with group work.

Let’s begin on what exactly was working on for these past months. You see I was assigned to work on a project based on my college campus’s food pantry. We were assigned to work on an Inventory culling system based on the expiration dates of the products on the shelves. To say that I had way more different expectations of what needed to be done would be an understatement but I am getting ahead of myself.

Back to the main project, I am in a group of five and we came up with several ways to approach this project. We decided that we should split the work, two would work on a scanner that would check the items’ barcodes for identifying product information and the other 3 would work on the backend for the function of culling the inventory.

I found that working on separate parts of the project worked well in the long run allowing people to focus on one of the many aspects of the projects. Especially with the amount that got done at the end. I would know as my part of the project was going well….sorta. 

There was some trouble, such as using an already established code as the base for the project. It made me realize something, I wasn’t sure how to approach the issues as the code base was made with and due to my lack of knowledge of JavaScript, it was going to be problematic. Fortunately, I had 2 other companions that could assist me and did a great job. From this, I seek to improve my overall knowledge of JavaScript and seek ways to utilize the code base better.

Recently I read a bit of a programmer mentoring book called Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. This experience reminds me of a pattern that I resonated with. Accurate Self-assessment, basically identifying what you know and what you don’t. A self-reflection of my skills and I found out that there is more that I can learn. I want to see this project succeed so I think I need to brush up on some skills that I am lacking so the project can come out great. That pattern is a good encouragement for me to study further.

Near the end of the project I was worried that it wasn’t going to be complete by our standards, fortunately, the other group got the scanner worker to find it, and we made some progress on the backend but I found that it didn’t reach our goal of what we wanted it to do. In the end, we were satisfied with our progress and hope to continue integrating the rest of the work.

Here is most of the work I have done it was mostly focused on trying to figure out testing our culling system and integration of product schema.

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem-culling/guestinfobackend/-/tree/main/specification?ref_type=heads

Here is the backend for the rest of the work done in collaboration with the others

https://gitlab.com/LibreFoodPantry/client-solutions/theas-pantry/inventorysystem-culling/guestinfobackend/-/tree/main/src?ref_type=heads

Thank you for your time, Have a nice one.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Debug Duck by debugducker and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns Chapter 1 and Chapter 2-6 Introductions

“Apprenticeship Patterns Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman” by Dave Hooper and Adewale Oshineye was interesting. This reading allowed me to reconnect my work to the text. The simple route would be to create a technical guideline but instead, this book goes into greater depth that mentality is the key. The mental fortitude to be humble and to always be open to learning new things from anyone to master your craft.

All the chapters hold great importance to me, I found chapters 3 and 5 to be the standouts. Two key things that stood out to me mainly were developing a long-lasting career and being adaptable in any situation. I am just beginning my career and one goal that I have to achieve before the rest is starting to create a long path to success. Not everything is going to happen in a day but taking it one day at a time and not focusing on the short term can come a long way. Slowly progressing and making small strides is the way to go. Adaptability is self-explanatory but with technology always changing and advancing, you must always be ready for the change. If you don’t adapt to it, technology will leave you behind. Some people may not like change but it’s great to always learn new things and change the way you used to do something for something better. An open mind is better than a closed one.

After reading this I have come to a new understanding of my career. It has taught me to have more purpose when I learn even the smallest things because to fully master something you must understand the big concepts and the small ones. When Learning you should focus on being competent on something instead of just acquiring it and moving on. Also, this is a long-term goal so don’t focus on the short term but look at it from a broader point of view where small increments can lead to bigger strides in the end. The main key to becoming a software craftsman is mentality because technical skills can only get you so far when you always must be moving forward and being able to adapt on short notice.

From the blog cs-wsu – DCO by dcastillo360 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.