This pattern, “be the worst” to my understanding means, we should surround ourselves with people who are very clever or know more about the subject or field you are in.

From the readings under “be the worst ” which says “what do i do when my rate of learning has leveled off?” You have taken the time to learn something new, immersed yourself in the subject matter, practiced diligently for a period of time and look up and see that you are ahead of those around you. Now what? There are only so many books, blogs, and other resources you can learn from until you reach a point where you must learn new skills from other humans. We are social creatures, by nature. We rely on each other to survive and part of that survival involves learning from each other. It’s difficult to imagine a world where we all had to learn everything on our own and couldn’t benefit from the knowledge and insight of those around us. So for us be connected with the world we need to learn from others. And also the is a saying not everything that we know, we learn from each other and by that we grow. So the more we learn from other developers, there more we grow as a developer. We can look for people who know more than we do and learn from them. We can also be in a team were you a the least among them. Knowing you are the least, you tend to work harder to keep up with them and also you get to learn new skill from them too.

From the readings “weakest member of the team, you should be working harder than anyone else”. There are risks associated with this strategy. You will be the least effective developer or person around the team. This also means your contributions will not be sufficient whereby dragging the team down. Because of this situation, team members may not put up with you very long. So not putting all these risks into consideration, if you are really determined to learn, you will have to strive harder. In other sense, the only choice for you to stay in the team is to learn harder. That also means extra work for you.

Apart from all the risk involve, being the worst is a great way to improve your effectiveness in a given subject area quickly

Reading this pattern has made me know that in my own world i may feel i know everything till it get out of my world to see i really know everything or not. which knowing everything will never be the case. We all learn from each other. And knowing this idea, I will have to surround with people who are more challenging or better that me. Through that i get to learn new skill and better my self.

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

I understand there will be a point in time where your team will be assigned a project that does not necessarily excite you. Sometimes it becomes quite difficult to work on something that you are not passionate about or the environment surrounding you is too hostile. From this chapter I learned that by working on one of your passions outside of work, you are in fact nurturing your passion and giving yourself a sense of fulfillment.

The author illustrates the important of setting clear boundaries that define the environment you are willing to work in. Steer clear of settings that disrupt your good mood; always try to stay positive.

I agree with this pattern because things may get overwhelming at times and this is the time where you have to take a step back and breathe. It allows you to connect with yourself again. I actually am not looking forward to experiencing times where an outside source impacts me and my work negatively and am curious as to how I will handle it.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Draw Your Own Map is a pattern that discusses how you must forge your own path in terms of your career and not let yourself be boxed in by your employer. This pattern is relevant for everybody who wishes to advance their career as there is only a limited set of career paths that any employer can offer. It is not up to anybody but yourself to decide what the next step in your career should be. When you figure out you want your next step to be, you should visualize the smaller steps that you need to take to get there. Taking the first step will help propel you to achieve your goals. If you discover that your vision for your future is not compatible with your current employer, you should start looking for other opportunities. Draw Your Own Map is all about not getting stuck in one place that doesn’t provide for career advancement.

I think that this is a very useful pattern to follow. It is common for people to grow comfortable in a certain role which makes them unwilling to look for other opportunities. It is also unlikely that any company will provide you the exact path that you want your career to follow. It’s important to remember that your employer is not invested in you advancing the exact way you want to. Even though you may work for a particular company for a long period of time and feel like you should have some level of loyalty, it is better to examine other opportunities when your company’s ideas for you are not aligning with your own. This is the only way to truly draw your own map.

I thought that the two example stories given were interesting to read through. Reading real life examples helps to drive home the point of the pattern and shows that this type of thing is not uncommon. It was also interesting to learn about two actual career paths that have been taken by people in the industry. Overall I think that this pattern is applicable to everybody and is important to remember for people beginning their careers.

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

The White Belt Pattern, as defined by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye, is an apprenticeship pattern with the goal to learn new concepts or information. The way the pattern achieves this is by having the user abandon their previous knowledge and conceptions regarding the topic, and look at the topic from a fresh perspective with a willingness to learn, despite the potential difficulty and inefficiency of doing so. This comes in handy if you are trying to learn a new programming language or if you need to solve a problem using a new or unfamiliar algorithm.

I definitely can recognize times in my life where use of the white belt pattern would have been helpful. Often times when I’m working on a puzzling programming challenge, I try to think of it in terms of challenges I’ve had before and previous problems I’ve overcome. If I can apply a previous solution to this problem, wouldn’t that be the best way to do it? While I personally do still think this kind of thinking can be useful in reminding yourself of your steps to reaching a previous solution, it can also be distracting and push your mind in the wrong direction. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to approach it from a totally new angle and abandon anything you think you know about how to solve it. Some times it’s the knowledge you think is helping you that is actually getting in the way.

I can absolutely see me reminding myself of this pattern and its intentions in the future. If I find myself overthinking something, or trying to shoehorn a solution to a problem that doesn’t fit, I will try to forget what I know and open my mind up to new solutions and ways of doing things. Even outside of programming, freeing up some of my preconceptions on the ways I think things work could be very healthy. It’s important not to let our accumulated knowledge cloud our judgement and prevent us from learning even more. After all, if our goal is to learn, we should approach it from the most practical way possible.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Let's Get TechNICKal by technickal4 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

When you ask a group of developers what is more important, writing adaptable code or writing tests for the code to pass? I believe that both are equally as important as the other. I came across a blog by Tobias Goeschel, “Writing better tests with JUnit”, where he talks about the importance of writing better tests. In order to keep your code as high quality as possible, you must write tests. Poorly written tests as he describes may lead to bugs bypassing your code and having malfunctions in your program. As he lists in his blog, a set of well written tests will tell you (and more):

• How to access the API
• What data is supposed to go in/out
• What possible variations of an expected behavior exist
• The exceptions that might occur
• How parts of the system interact with others

Tobias goes on and talks about how good tests should not be underestimated because it not only helps new team members understand what should be done but also reviewing old code that’s to be tampered with.

Reading through this article it all makes sense why we were always so test driven with the projects that we did in Data Structures. Every project we wrote had to pass a certain amount of pre-written tests. The author stressed the importance of unit testing which changes the way I will write in the future. Not only will I focus on written code but also tests. I believe that Unit Testing is equally important as mentioned.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life in the Field of Computer Science by iharrynguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

https://www.360logica.com/blog/difference-between-static-testing-and-dynamic-testing/

            While trying to gain more information on Static and Dynamic Testing, I found an interesting blog post that pit the two against each other. It started by explaining that Static Testing is used to test things related to the actual code within a product. The post further says that Static testing is where developers check code to find faults. This testing can be completed without any current applications. The post then defines Dynamic Testing as testing the application with valid entries and checking their outcomes against an expected result. After explaining the two terms, it stated the major differences between them like how Static testing is a preventative measure while dynamic testing is used in solutions. The post explains that Static testing is therefore more cost-effective and provide greater benefits when compared to Dynamic testing. Dynamic testing can take longer as it tests each case separately while Static testing can cover more in a shorter amount of time. The blog post goes on to explain that since Static testing is done in a verification stage, the code can be looked at without any execution. This differs from the Dynamic testing which is done in a validation stage where the code is executed and tested without being looked at.

            I chose this article because I found myself interested in the difference between Static and Dynamic Testing. I understood these terms in a programming sense, but I didn’t quite grasp the concept in a testing setting. My initial curiosity was filled with a sense of what these different testing types meant. I found the post very informative on what each testing type did and how they worked. I can understand that Static testing is better overall because of its speed and benefits but I also understood how Dynamic testing works as well. I enjoyed how the post used multiple examples when explaining these terms because it allowed me to get a better understanding as to the context of the definition. This blog post has taught me that Static testing is the go to style for testing as it is cost-effective and overall better. The most interesting part about this post was the different benefits it stated between Static and Dynamic testing as it gave a better insight to how they both worked.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Student To Scholar by kumarcomputerscience and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.