Category Archives: Software Development

CS443 – Introduction

Hello everyone, we are back and doing it again this semester. Tech Worth Talking About returns with posts about two courses, CS443 – Software Quality Assurance and Testing as well as CS448 – Software Development Capstone.
CS443 will focus more on strategies and tools for automating code testing as well as how testing incorporates into the overall development process. This goes far beyond simply debugging.

Welcome, and stay tuned!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tech. Worth Talking About by jelbirt and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 14 – Token #2 – CS-343

For this blog, I specifically wanted to look into how this class relates to the preferred field I want to go into, which is Game Design. I wanted to see what kind of languages would be used, what kind of design elements are implemented, and even in the case of frontend vs. backend, how online games employ servers.

However, it seems like I had a misunderstanding that these two positions were similar omewere, as I find many sources that say software design vs. game design are a completely different beast, which only made me more interested. I did some more research, and this lead me to end up reading this article below:

Software Engineer vs Game Developer – Which one is for you?

Specifically I noticed that software development has more rigidity when it comes to designing and delivering a product. Software engineers are usually employed to design a software to meet consumers demands, which usually entails specific features and options they’d want in the software you’re developing. Whereas with game design, you have a much more flexible development cycle, as theres a lot more creativity involved. You’re less focused on making sure specific features are available and more focused on delivering a product that is unique and interesting for consumers, and keeps them engaged.

Game developers also rarely work with programming languages when it comes to development of products. Game developers mainly use engines, which are interfaces that employ programming languages to create building blocks to build off of to create a video game. Software engineers mainly work with the code directly at almost all times, making sre each line is properly written. That’s not to say some game devs don’t work with code directly, some do, and many Triple A companies actually write their own engines using their own code, like in the case of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, which is used to power their famous game Fortnite.

Something this article notes is that software developers may not need to worry about performance compared to game developers, and I can understand why they might say that. Games rel on having a fluid and enjoyable experience, and that is dependant on the performance of a game, making sure theres no glitches, bugs, or lag. However, I would argue that performance is still a factor within software design too, because what if a simple calculation process in a program takes multiple minutes? Consumers will still have an issue with that. While I do think it’s definitely a lot more important in game development, that’s not to say it’s not unimportant in software design.

And that’s all my blogs for this semester! I’ll be taking another of Professor Wursts classes next semester, so I’ll likely be writing again then. See all you readers come January!

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.

AHK as a Developer Tool

AutoHotKey Scripting Software

AutoHotkey (AHK) is a powerful and versatile free, open source software and scripting language for Windows operating systems exclusively. It provides an environment where users can create custom scripts to automate repetitive and/or menial tasks, create custom GUI’s, manipulate windows, files and applications, and create custom hotkeys, macros, and key-rebinds. Users can quickly create and tailor scripts toward specific tasks they face to significantly improve their overall efficiency and minimize errors. In essence, AHK can be used to automate and otherwise enhance users’ ability to perform software development and other processes from start to finish.

Upon downloading AHK, the main Dashboard GUI has several useful features to help users get started and in general as they create scripts, including a compiler, link to Help Files, Settings, and a Window Spy tool to extract application window data. Using Window Spy, users can easily identify and access a window’s “ahk id” to hook into and directly input to that window using AHK methods, such as ControlClick, which sends mouse inputs to a given client at a specified x-y mouse coordinate. Conveniently, the Window Spy tool also provides functionality to easily identify the on-screen/client x-y coordinates of a given mouse position. There are similar functions for directly inputting strings (rather than clicks).

One of the most intriguing features of AHK which led me to pursue learning it on a deeper level is its capacity to directly interact with application client windows and any separate application GUI’s (including mouse and key inputs, minimizing/maximizing, setting window focus, and more) without focusing on them and interrupting other active processes. This is extremely beneficial for testing, data collection/recording and more – for example testing may be run in the background with the results recorded to an output file whilst the user is actively working on other tasks independently. Furthermore, AHK scripts can easily be set to repeat at a specified time period; the previously mentioned background testing/recording can be called upon to execute every X minutes with zero input from the user or interference on their tasks. Increased convenience and efficiency with less human error or interaction!

Some other functions in AHK which I have read or seen videos about and hope to start implementing soon include PixelSearch and ImageSearch. PixelSearch is a versatile tool of the form: 

PixelSearch, &OutputVarX, &OutputVarY, X1, Y1, X2, Y2, ColorID , Variation

Searching for a specified hexadecimal ColorID within the specified screen space and returning output variables containing the coordinates of the first found pixel of that color. The outputs can easily then be used in other functions, and this method synergizes well with other tools that may identify certain occurrences with a color highlight or other marker. The ImageSearch function works similarly, but takes an Image input (easily generated with the Window Spy tool) and searches for an occurrence of the input within the search coordinate range. An interesting component of both PixelSearch and ImageSearch is the Variation parameter visible above near the end of the PixelSearch skeleton. This variable allows variance in the color/image which is being searched for to increase the likelihood of finding the target even if minor screen/image shifts have occurred, which can be common depending on the application or instance.

There are countless other features and functions in AHK which I have not yet gotten a chance to learn about. If you or a friend/colleague have experience with AHK functions, feel free to reach out with questions/discussion/advice to my email at jelbirt@worcester.edu !

Information/Source Links:

Post discussing use of AHK for coding: https://python.plainenglish.io/coding-faster-with-autohotkey-453a2face9af
AHK Home site: https://www.autohotkey.com/
AHK Method Documentation –
ControlSend: https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/lib/ControlSend.htm
ControlClick: https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/lib/ControlClick.htm
PixelSearch: https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/lib/PixelSearch.htm
ImageSearch: https://www.autohotkey.com/docs/v2/lib/ImageSearch.htm

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tech. Worth Talking About by jelbirt and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

WSU x AMPATH || Sprint Retrospective 6

Sams ShipsHey guys, it’s a weird feeling to be wrapping up my last semester in my undergraduate career in computer science (and sociology). For this final installment of my AMPATH sprint series, I will just go over the general overview of what went on for my team.

Most of our updates went onto our PowerPoint presentation, which is going to be presented on May 15th, 2019. My team and I are looking forward to presenting the overall process of our group’s learning and working process, the many lessons we learned, our advice for future students, the work we tried to implement, and various other technical aspects of our project.

We decided that on top of the search bar work, it is also a priority to organize the git repository so it can be better organized and an open work environment for other classes. I think this is important especially when new people come in and cannot efficiently locate and access the files they need. As someone who was once new to an organization that had a lot of different projects and files to sort through, I believe that this is very considerate of the team to go with this.

With some limitations my team had to face, we worked around it to determine how we should move forward. The end result is pretty much a search bar that is attached to the toolbar. It cannot currently be live tested due to there being no backend but it can definitely be done in the future under certain circumstances.

It was interesting being able to observe how much planning you can start with but still end up having to take detours, starting new paths completely, or sometimes even needing to take U-turns.

I thought it would be important to pull some of the advice for future students from our PowerPoint and include them in this wrap-up:

  • Point out and address problems with technology right away because others around you might have the same problem(s) so you can solve them collectively
  • Do all team implementations in a separate component based on what you will be working on
  • Merge your work constantly to the master branch so each team can have the updated changes

A pattern I am noticing in a lot of teams or group projects is that not everything is going to work out in ways that you expected or were hoping for but you learn to move as a shifting team to make progress and continue growth.

Overall, I’d say I learned an important life lesson from this: if I am to contribute extra time on top of my technology career in the future to work on side projects, it will be a challenge to allocate time if it is a group initiative. I also learned that even when we try to communicate everything there is still more room for miscommunication, so there may be no such thing as over-communicating. I am happy to say that we always tried our best to move forward in all ways!

 

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

Find Mentors || S.S. 10

Sams Ships (13)In this final installment of my individual apprenticeship patterns, I think an important one to write about would be Find Mentors. To summarize the main point of this one, I would say that it encourages people to observe their role and their surroundings to see where they can find the most value from learning or use their resources. It encourages you to look at things from one level back instead of blindly jumping into something right away.

Personally, I have been in a role where I had to figure out a lot of things that could have just been taught to me. I quickly learned that I would be able to ask other junior developers how they managed to learn things on their own and it helped me a lot. If other junior developers were not available, then I would work my way up to people who had the most recent on-boarding experience and hope that they could recall the process I was currently going through. For the most part, that worked out well!

Thanks to this pattern, I thought it was useful to think about and remind ourselves that even though our mentors will know a lot more about us, they still do not know everything. They are still continuing to learn as much as we are in their own careers.

I thought I should update this blog to throw in a little hidden announcement if anyone actually reads these that I will be learning at a company with about 100 peers going through the same thing. This makes me feel a lot more confident knowing that I will have a designated support system around me and have mentors around.

Overall, I agreed with the pattern. This is because I can testify with my personal experiences how useful it was to be able to utilize my resources including being able to ask mentors questions or just find my own. A common question I had for my interviewers was, “Will I have a mentor or support system along the way throughout my career progression?” Personally, it is important for me to have a designated place to go for support because it just takes one more worry away about having to ask somebody a question.

It is now time to conclude my individual apprenticeship pattern series! I hope you have at least learned one thing from it because I have learned so many things.

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

WSU x AMPATH || Sprint 5 Retrospective

Sams Ships (14)Over the past two weeks, my team continued to discuss what we are working on as usual. We have come to the conclusion that we will add our Search Bar component once there are updates and more of a base to work off of. This was concluded after we realized that the process would be much more efficient. The parameters and details on the search bar would be harder to figure out without making up a base anyways.

Some advice for others who may be working on the same thing would be to try and collaborate or discuss potential orders between groups if one thing may depend on another. That would make it much simpler from the start if possible so there aren’t any clashes or time wasted on doing extra work that could have just been done by one group or team.

In the meantime, I did a little more research on the AMPATH system out of curiosity since we are going to be building onto their work. I found out that there are 500+ care sites in Kenya! It is interesting to think about the potential impact our work may make on how AMPATH carries out their process. Their initiative reminds me of what Enactus at Worcester State strives for when they work on projects to help people or organizations in the community “sustain their own success, connect them with universal health insurance, train next generation medical professionals, and research new breakthroughs and best practices.” Being able to help a healthcare organization is pretty meaningful, especially as a project through my capstone.

A way to tie our 348 course (Software Process Management) with our 448 (Capstone) course would be through now being able to use Travis CI and Heroku. It was interesting being able to experience using these in class and help our peers use it and now be able to use them in our capstone. I think the practice we got was nice because I found that my peers and I were more comfortable with following steps that were written out and explained to us instead of just “going for it.” I have also noticed that our 348 course helped us pay more attention to how we interact with others, which is very useful for the future when we will be working in teams of developers to create or update new technologies. One more thing which I found useful was seeing Travis CI load, and the race against time when it came to classmates pushing code at the same time; it made me push myself to be a little faster while at the same time not be sloppy about what I was putting into my code.

Overall, we discussed what we will do in these coming weeks as the semester comes to a close. The project we are planning on presenting will feature a search bar which we plan to implement by then. I am excited to see what we end up with in terms of helping AMPATH and their healthcare system!

 

 

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

WSU x AMPATH || Sprint 3 Retrospective

Sams Ships (11)Hey guys! This sprint retrospective will cover what the WSU Coders Without Borders team has done from the week before spring break and up until this week.

As the project is propelling forward even more than before–due to us having more concrete plans to begin working on the project, it has been an exciting transition. We saw our options from Greg’s wireframes and explanations through his YouTube videos. From there, we created Zeplin accounts so we could visually understand and remember certain parts of the app in progress.

Since it was my first time using Zeplin, I wanted to add a little review of it. As someone who loves to organize things, I found that it is a great tool to have for sorting projects and handing off designs and style-guides to other users. It seems like an effective way to share ideas directly with people.

The overall WSU team now has a GitHub section for dividing up the components and issues we will be working on. So far, my team is going to tackle the search bar and everything else it would entail to create. It was nice being able to collaborate amongst one another to find a component that we agreed to work on (and the fact that a few other components had already been assigned to some teams helped our decision be made faster).

From there, we were figuring out what we need to do and how we can get things done. We discussed some potential ideas with Professor Wurst and from there continued to brainstorm for the search bar. There is nothing that comes to my mind that I would have chose to proceeded differently with if I could go back.

We are continuing our meetings as they have been scheduled and are actively participating in our stand-ups. I like being able to scroll through the log of my team’s answers because it shows our progression throughout the semester as well as serving as a reminder of when we did something specifically. I am happy to say that my team does not seem to have run into any issues or potential miscommunication among one another. It really shows how we are all working to achieve something together and effectively communicate what is happening.

In this sprint retrospective I also wanted to discuss how what we learned may be applied in other situations like in the workforce. We have to make sure we are checking in with teammates to have them understand the project more and be able to express their opinions and concerns when they arise. Similar to the bystander effect in psychology, if there is no direct communication between members when it comes to getting things done, how will there be any progression versus just observing what is happening? All it takes is being comfortable to ask different individuals if they have anything to share or add to the open conversation.

Overall, I am excited to move forward and see what is in store for me and my team during these weeks up until the end of the semester!

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

Craft Over Art || S.S. 8

Sams Ships (10)As we have a few weeks left in the semester, I wanted to discuss the more creative apprenticeship patterns. This time I’m going to describe Craft Over Art, which is basically when a solution to a client’s problem can be solved with something that could work…or we could take it and go above and beyond. It’s being more innovative than just settling for a solution just to have something.

I found that the pattern is interesting because it emphasized the importance of how the things built for customers can still be beautiful but must always be useful. If it strays away from being useful, then it no longer counts as the craft.

I also found it to be thought-provoking because it brought up how people are truly in charge of how a problem gets solved. No one can force you to code something a certain way if they do not know a way to solve it on their own, which is why your role exists in the first place.

The pattern has caused me to change the way I think about my intended profession because your work can still reflect you in terms of creativity. As a person, I think I am more on the creative side and incorporating more ideas into creating something for people sounds pretty cool. If I had to follow a super rigorous structure, I may feel limited in what I can do to produce work that makes me happier.

The one thing I have to disagree with in the pattern is the part where it mentions that someone is suddenly no longer “part of the craft” if they deviate a little further. Who sets these boundaries? I do not want people to feel like they are not “enough” to be considered a real craftsman or whichever term it is referred it as just because they were being extra.

Overall, I appreciated the action section which encouraged people to reflect on what projects they worked on or situations they may have found themselves in where they chose creativity over usefulness. At the moments where I have personally done so, I had felt more proud of my work, because I knew it was uniquely mine.

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

Sustainable Motivations || S.S. 7

Sams Ships (9)From recent conversations with friends and professionals I’ve had genuine one-on-one discussions with, a common concern people have is whether they will continue to actually enjoy what they do. Today I’m going to discuss the Sustainable Motivations apprenticeship pattern. This pattern pretty much goes over scenarios people may run into throughout their careers in technology. There will be great days where people may be amazed that they are getting paid to create things and there will be rough days where people may be doubting if it is the right profession for them at all.

The points brought up remind me of a recent article from the New York Times titled Wealthy, Successful, and Miserable. What happens when the new-ness of what started as an exciting role to join in a company wears off and you are left off with unsettled feelings? It is up to individuals to keep going until they find what they love again or shift what they are doing a little to stimulate something new.

I like how the pattern encourages people to come up with a list of things that motivate them. It then tells them to reflect on what those things means or if there is a noticeable pattern from the things they have chosen. Having a list like this around to remind people of what they are working for is a reassuring way to keep them going. It reminds me of a post on LinkedIn I saw where someone kept a sticky note on their monitor screen that just had a number like “-$237.25” because it was to remind them of how much they had in their bank account when they started their job.

The pattern has caused me to think about the way I intend to work as someone who constantly likes to change things up or is not afraid of change. I do not disagree with anything in the patterns as it tells us to keep pushing and persevering by thinking about The Long Road, which is another apprenticeship pattern.

Overall, I think people interested in this pattern should read the NYT article I linked as well because it gives insight on the difference it makes when people do something that makes their work feel more meaningful.

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

Breakable Toys || S.S. 6

Sams Ships (7)Recently, I have been seeing plenty of messages along the lines of “We learn from failure, not from success.” As someone who used to regularly watch all of Casey Neistat’s vlogs from the beginning days, it is something that has been ingrained in me to take risks and know that if I fail, then at least I did not give up and allowed myself to try.

When I saw the Breakable Toys apprenticeship pattern, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to discuss trying things! This pattern is basically trying to explain to us that you need a safe space to learn something even if you work in an environment that may not allow for failure. It encourages us to seek our own way to sharpen our skills and take initiative, which would increase our confidence.

I found that this pattern is thought-provoking because where would you be if you did not take all the risks or new experiences beforehand to get to where you are today? I used to study biology and chemistry until I gave computer science a real chance. It was a little daunting at first to catch up but I made it (so far). If I did not take on leadership opportunities when given the chance, would I have the observation skills I have today when it comes to being involved on a team? Probably not!

If you do not allow yourself to try something out or practice something, I think you would feel a lot more pressure. It was reassuring to hear that someone like Steve Baker also experienced something like that, which makes it a lot more normalized.

As kids, we started learning how to interact with the world by playing with toys and developing our own sense of physics. Through that, we took risks like throwing things, sliding things down places, and etc., until we figured things like “oh, maybe I should not have accidentally thrown that ball too high and it went to the neighbors yard!” But at the same time, you’re a little proud that you’ve gotten better at throwing the ball harder.

That’s the same thing with developing yourself in your professional career. I will allow myself some time and space to learn something without that pressure and it may surprise me, once again, how far I may go.

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