The overall idea of the white belt apprenticeship pattern is that when you are learning a new skill for example a new language you need to actually need to learn a new skill and a new process. You can’t just apply the old process to the new skill. That will only result in, as the pattern says in its programming example, “writing fortran in any other language”. It says you can accomplish this by unlearning some of your previous skills and starting from scratch with the new skill. It also says that many people are scared to do that because they worry about looking foolish or ignorant. In the example of learning a new programming language it’s important because if you don’t unlearn some of your habits from a programming language you already know and unlearn how to code in that old language you will end up never learning how to use some of the new features of the new language. This is the overall idea and point of the white belt apprenticeship pattern.

I like and agreed with applying this pattern and its main point. I like how it says that in order to learn something you have to start from the beginning and let go of how preconceived notions about how code should be written. I agree with how it says if you don’t do that you won’t be able to write in the new language the way it was meant to be used. I also agree with how it says also that if you dont you will miss out on some  features of the new language.

I found a lot of it interesting and useful. I found it interesting how there was a saying about writing a new language like the old language. I found it useful to remember that when learning a new language it’s important. I found it thought provoking how it says that it’s important to unlearn before you learn. It’s kinda the opposite of what you would think at first. However it makes sense. I will definitely keep this in mind and use this in my future career when learning new languages or skills. Overall I really like this pattern.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tim's WebSite by therbsty and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week, I would like to discuss the “Sustainable Motivations” pattern. This pattern explains that professional software developers often must work on messy projects with unclear specifications and conflicting demands. Such chaotic projects are exhausting and frustrating to work on, which can cause developers to lose their motivation to pursue software craftsmanship. The pattern’s solution emphasizes that developers need motivations that will adapt to the difficulties presented by these projects. Developers should have multiple sources of motivation so that, when is damaged by an infuriating situation, they will have other reasons to push through their frustration until the situation gets better. The pattern recommends writing down our different sources of motivation to help us understand which are the most important. When we find ourselves loosing the desire to continue developing software, we can refer back to this list to remind us why we should continue.

As I have explained in my past couple posts on Apprenticeship Patterns, I have really been struggling with motivation over the last few years. Many software-related projects I have worked on during college have been exhausting, frustrating, or unclear. I found it difficult to complete such projects because I simply couldn’t find the effort to work on them. This pattern resonated with me because it focuses on this very issue. I especially relate to the second bulleted example given by the solution, which describes a developer whose main motivation is their enjoyment of programming. For me, this was the main reason I decided to pursue software development, and it has been discouraging to feel that enjoyment dwindle.

However, the developer in the example continued programming due to financial motivations despite a loss of passion, and they eventually regained their love for programming. Similarly, I have continued to pursue software development because of my desire to finish college. I’ve never really considered my education to be a reason to program, but in retrospect it has clearly been my main motivation for the past several years. Clearly, reading this pattern has helped me think differently about my motivations. I’ve always thought my enjoyment of programming was the only motivator I had, but I now realize that other factors, like finishing college and gaining experience, have actually been motivating me more. Hopefully, these other motivators keep pushing me to continue programming until I am able to regain my passion for it.

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

The apprenticeship pattern Create Feedback Loops is an interesting way to learn from yourself and your own interaction with your environment. This apprenticeship pattern is about finding ways to review or “give yourself feedback” regarding your level of skill and competence on whatever you may be working on. 

Working in a team environment you may want to find out your team’s opinion on you and your contribution to the work. It’s not enough to judge your success based on the team’s success, whether that success is good or bad. Being on a team that is great and completes tasks efficiently it is important to know if you are a key contributing factor, or as this pattern put it, a “backup singer”. Just the same if you are on a team that is not producing good work, you can’t get stuck thinking that you are the best on the team and blame the failure on others. Even if it’s not your fault you have to realize that you are not contributing yourself correctly and this could hold you back from furthering your career.

Testing yourself on your own is also important in setting a realistic but higher standard for yourself. Test your work early, learn to expect failure and don’t be discouraged when you do. This pattern is about overcoming your failure by understanding what you can improve. Creating clear feedback is basically a criticism that can be acted upon. “Reinforcing feedback encourages you to do more of something. Balancing feedback encourages you to do less of something”. See both of these types of feedback require you to act, they aren’t stalling you with no clear direction.

One of my favorite examples from this pattern was that of asking for feedback from job interviews or team members. Asking people’s opinion of yourself can help you understand how you are contributing to your environment. A job interview that rejected you could be a great source of knowledge to prepare you for your next interview. Building from failure is how you create success, the more you have from failure the more you can put together to succeed. I find it vigorously motivating to ask my team members their opinion of me and my contribution. Of course I take pride in hearing positive feedback, but I often find that the criticisms help motivate me to be better. Now as long as feedback is delivered to you respectfully it’s great to receive in order to help with your direction. Your team members will also find that an open and friendly environment of communication helps team morale and forward progress.

From the blog cs@worcester – Zac's Blog by zloureiro and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

 Often times when you are a newcomer on a project, the team does not know your capabilities and does not know your worth. It is vital that you show your value in any means possible. This is often accomplished by taking on the unglamorous tasks but preforming to the highest of your ability. Since you are new, the team can not immediately trust you to be thrown in the midst of the project as it can often be dangerous without understanding the full scope, depending on what is being worked on. By completing these seemingly meaningless tasks to the best of your ability, it will help to prove our worth to the team. Eventually, all those “meaningless tasks” will be vital to the project and if the team is able to see them done to highest quality, they will be able to incorporate you deeper into the project.

I find this pattern to be one of the most useful patterns I have read, not only in the computer science world but in life. Often times when starting any new job, you are given the low-end tasks. When I was working at a grocery store when I was younger, I was given all the tasks of taking out the trash, cleaning the floors, and a lot of other unpleasantries. However, I was always on top of these and never had to be asked for them to be completed. In a short time, they had moved me off of these tasks and onto managing the next person who would be doing them. By simply proving my worth early on, in what seemed to be meaningless tasks, I was quickly able to gain my teams trust.

I think this pattern simply reinforces the mindset that I have always had whenever you are beginning something new. Often times people will come in with their head held high because they were considered extremely competent at their old work. However, if the new team you are a part has no reason to respect you yet and you come in with an arrogant attitude, that will cause the team to immediately not respect you. You must always put in the grounds work in order to start to build anywhere.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Journey Through Technology by krothermich and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Often times when moving forward in your career, you will end facing many different projects that can seem overwhelming when you do not have the full grasp on it yet. This can cause people to shutdown due to their sheer lack of motivation after being discouraged over and over. This pattern says to help fight this type of interreference, it is also okay to Retreat Into Competence. This is essentially moving back onto work that you are confident in and able to complete easily. This will allow for you to gain the needed confidence and motivation in order to start working on a harder, lesser known task. However, you can not retreat into competence for too long or the dread of restarting the hard work will outweigh the problem prior.

I find this pattern to speak to me in many ways. Often times I feel myself overextended and worn out from trying to learn a hundred new things at once in order to complete a certain project. When this happens, I tend to get discouraged easily once things start to fall apart. Thankfully, I had realized how useful this pattern is without knowing it existed. When this happens, I will always tend to move back to a smaller easier project to complete before returning. The pride of accomplishment allows for me to get back into grinding on the harder project.

I believe reading this pattern helped to reinforce the idea that returning to something more basic is not always a bad thing. Often times I will feel like I am wasting my time on simpler tasks, so I move to the harder ones but end up accomplishing neither because I lack the motivation for the harder task. From here on out, I plan on using a smaller, more well-known task as a way to kick start my work and allow for my confidence to grow. From there I believe it will end up becoming much easier for me to take on these large-scale tasks while still also being able to feel like I am continuously accomplishing something towards my goal.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Journey Through Technology by krothermich and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

For my final project in CS 343, I have chosen to create a
Pokédex SPA that uses a public database, PokeAPI, with RESTful API. So, my
focus has been on page layout and how to search for data with limited methods
since the backend is all set.

I went through several different ways of trying to set up
the page layout, but eventually I settled on CSS grids. I found these grids to
be intuitive and easy to manipulate. It was not long until I was able to
successfully create a basic layout to work with. I used the grid-template-areas
CSS property to set a dynamically resizable layout.

CSS:       grid-template-areas:
     “header header”
                                                                “menu content”
                                                                “footer
footer”

I used the CSS fractional units to determine the width of
the columns (1:4) and static sizes for the height of the header and footer with
the content in-between filling the page. Now that I have a basic layout to work
with, I can focus on added functionality.

A function I have currently implemented is a search for Pokémon
by id number or name. For now, the page simply displays the name, image, and id,
but the API provides much more data that I haven’t included. The evolution tree
function is still a WIP. Connecting the evolution chains to the specified Pokémon
was a small issue. The API does not provide a way for an evolution chain to be
searched for by Pokémon. I eventually settled on creating a map, at page load, by
looping through all available chains and pairing them with their respected Pokémon.
The plan is to use the chain to render a pop-up that displays the entire evolutionary
tree. I also have a moves search that works similarly to the Pokémon search.

I am now trying to think of ways of using the pokeAPI in interesting ways. I will probably add some more search options to the menu as well as adding more options for linking relevant data. Even though my project is still fairly new, I have learned a great deal about HTML and CSS so far.

From the blog CS@Worcester – D’s Comp Sci Blog by dlivengood and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I have have been working on a big term project lately for my all classes. I when me and my group were planning what to do I decided to try use a UML to do the planning like I had learned about in my class a few months ago. It was big help in figuring about how to structure the program and figure out how make it work. It also help a lot with being able to communicate with group members so we could all work on it at same and it would still be compatible.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Tim’s Blog by therbsty and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.