Category Archives: Software Development

The Clean Coder. Chapter 1 & 2

In this weeks reading of The clean Coder, we read Chapter 1&2 which talks about the importance of professionalism and saying “no”. In the software development field ,some important aspects of professionalism are taking responsibility, being knowledgeable about your field, and having work ethic.

So what does it mean to be a professional?. A professional knows their job is as important as it gets and all their actions can lead to certain consequences. As developers, we must be responsible for staying up to date on our profession and continuously keep growing. No matter how tough and frustrating our job gets we are responsible for getting the job done right. The book makes a good point by mentioning that “The human body is too complex to understand in it’s entirety, but doctors still take an oath to do no harm. If they don’t take themselves off a hook like that, how can we? Doctors knows the consequences of mistakes and fights to prevent them. If we are truly considered professionals,  we can do the same.

Moreover, as a professional, we are required to be extremely knowledgeable about you field. Customers will expect you to know what you are doing and do your job flawlessly. We are held accountable for the quality of our work. As professionals, we have no rooms for mistakes; we must minimize our flaws as our careers advances. The way developers can ensure that there mistakes stays at a minimum is to test their work over and over again. Quality assurance is a huge part of professionalism.

I never knew the importance of saying “no” in the software development field, until i read about it in the book. During our career there  will be times where we are pressured into doing things that are just not feasible. It is up to a professional to stand their ground and face confrontation in order to make the right decisions. It is important to be realistic on the difficulty of our job and to be upfront about it no matter how tough it may be. It is better to let your boss know that a project is not ready than to delivering the project knowing that it’s not fully complete or tested. This will save a lot of money and avoid having pissed of clients in your hands. As the book mentions, it is foolish to deliver function at the expense of structure.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by adestinyblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Professionals say NO.

I started reading this book for my software development capstone course entitled “The Clean Coder” and I’ve got to say, I’ve been enjoying it more than some other books I’ve read. The book is both informative but also has a casual feel to it because of all the stories and examples that the author uses. The first chapter of the book starts off with a key and important concept; professionalism. This makes sense because in order to be successful in a professional company, you need professionalism. Now for most this may sound trivial but from my personal experience, I have seen many examples that makes me question whether this concept is really that obvious to everyone.

Professionalism is summarized in the book as being responsible and accountable. Going into the second chapter of the book; a part of being professional is the ability to know when to say no. I truly feel as though this is such an overlooked idea because people always try to be the hero and save the day by constantly agreeing to tasks that they know cannot be accomplished. Now surely it may sound good to your employer or boss that you are saying yes to all these assignments but at the end of the day all you’re really doing is setting yourself up for failure which damages your credibility and in turn, ruins your accountability.

 

CS 448 Week 1 Blog The Clean Coder Chapter 1 – 2 (January 17 – January 23)

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

Yay, Scrum!

For this semester, we will be collaborating with OpenMRS and AMPATH for the entire duration of the course to possibly help develop some type of new software that the association can use in their medical systems. That alone in itself is extremely exciting and I can’t wait to really begin diving into the hands-on programming of whatever software it is we will be developing because this will be the first time I am doing something that is career-based related in the real world.

What’s even more exciting is the new framework of Scrum that I have recently been introduced to. The idea of Scrum is to divide up the development cycle up into 1 to 2 week intervals known as sprints where there are goals and objectives set for each sprint that the team focuses on completing before moving onto the next sprint into the rest of whatever needs to be developed. I don’t really want to dive a lot into how Scrum actually works because I’m sure you can look it up online for a better understanding of it if you want but I am really looking forward to incorporating this framework into our collaboration with OpenMRS and AMPATH and gain further exposure to experiences I will most likely be using once I get a job as a software developer.

While I was job hunting, there were definitely a handful of companies and corporations who are looking for employees with experience in Scrum so hopefully I can add that to my resume after this course!

CS 448 Week 1 Blog (January 17 – January 23)

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

Week 1

During the first week of this software development course, we took the time to form teams that will work well together. Most of the class time was used to get comfortable in our teams and prepare to work on our AMPATH and openMRS projects. We are using slack to communicate with our groups as well as the rest of the class. Although I have never used slack in the past, I find it very useful and it is an efficient way to stay connected and share information.

During this week i have learned about openMRS and AMPATH, what they are, and what they stand for. It interesting to learn that OpenMRS is used throughout the world and they help countless individuals who needs medical attention. Moreover,  Learning Angular JavaScript is required to work on these project, therefore our team have been researching and practicing Angular.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by adestinyblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Worcester State University

I currently am attending Worcester State University and am enrolled in the Software Development Capstone course where we get to take a look at OpenMRS and get a feel for what the real world for development is like. We each get a small group, similar to any work environment, and work together to accomplish tasks that help the OpenMRS project. I am looking forward to the challenges ahead!

From the blog CS@worcester – Greg Tzikas by Greg Tzikas and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.