Category Archives: Week 3

Don’t Repeat Yourself

For this week’s post in the coding journey blog, we are going to talk about a principle in software coding knows as dry. I chose this topic for this specific week because it felt relevant to the classwork we did this past week with super classes, abstract classes and interfaces.

What dry means is don’t repeat yourself and this concept is very important for developing software. The actual principle is represented as “Every piece of knowledge or logic must have a single, unambiguous representation within a system.” Now take for example the classwork we were doing, and how there was a method in the superclass that we decided all the subclasses would also include through inheritance. Now in the subclasses, if we wanted that method to do a different version of the method such as fly or quack, then we would have to alter each and every subclass. Even if a subclass does not have the fly or quack method, we would have to add the method and have the code do nothing. Just by talking about this you can see how redundant this starts to become. Now you may be able to get by with this repetition if you’re working on a small project and don’t have much to check for. However, when it comes to larger projects this will certainly turn into a never ending nightmare. Your code breaks and you have to go through all this different code which is similar and figure out what is off. This just seems like a waste of time and effort. This is why the common notion is to use the principle of don’t repeat yourself which has the goal of reducing repetition of the same software over and over again.

The big problem with repeated code over time is that it will become very hard to maintain. If over time, there comes a big change to the code and the logic changes, then it will become a headache. All the places where the previous logic was used, needs to be altered and the big thing that will be wasted is time. If you want to create quality code, then you will also have to use quality time. It is thereby better from the get go to design code to not repeat the same unnecessary methods and logic in multiple places.

To put this into perspective on a personal level, in the past I most certainly used repetitive code and wasted a lot of time. It may have seemed like the easier option sometimes, but as I dove deeper into my projects it became more difficult to figure out the solution for bugs and tracing the code for error. In the future, I know it is the best option to optimize the best way for the code to work without repetition in order to help myself and others down the line.

To read up on more sources, check out these links here: https://medium.com/code-thoughts/dont-repeat-yourself-caa413910753

https://dzone.com/articles/software-design-principles-dry-and-kiss#:~:text=DRY%20stand%20for%20%22Don’t,unambiguous%20representation%20within%20a%20system.%22

From the blog CS@Worcester – Roller Coaster Coding Journey by fbaig34 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CODE SMELLS

After the class activity on smells, I was interested in knowing more about it and how it relates to programming. The term was quite interesting, so I chose this topic because I wanted to know more. After several searches, I finally settled on this blog that talks about code smells and makes it easy to understand.

In this blog, I like the fact that it relates code smells to the everyday smell that we know, typically body odor. Initially I was thinking of code smell as a bug but this blog made it clear that it isn’t a bug. Blog talks about the downside of having code smells which are causing technical debt and affecting the maintainability of software system. It also gives some links to some series that explains more about code smells, giving examples, code snippets and how to identify and solve smells in a code. It talks about various code smells which are Method-level, Class-level and General-level code smells. Each type of code smells mentioned explains and give an overview/points on what to look out for in codes/programs to identify a specific kind of code smell. This blog also talks about some stereotypes of code smells that I found interesting and relevant.  

In this blog, I learned that code smell is a piece of code that we perceive as incorrect but do not fix right away. That being said, code smells in software programs will produce output but may affect the quality of the program if not taken care of.

In method-level code smell, I learned that there are certain things that one must check in methods to identify smells. These include the method not being used, taking too many parameters, doing too many or little things, having too many branches or loops. I always thought that methods can have as much parameters as it can but little did I know that too many parameters in a method could affect a software system and needs to be corrected. In the future I will not include methods that I do not use in my program.

I learned in Class-level code smells that the name of a class and programming interface should reflect its purpose. Also, when a class does too much or too little work, class unnecessarily exposes its internal details, inherits a base class but only some of its inherited behavior is needed, design of a class is overly complex are indications of code smells.

As I was reading through the series in this blog, I found very educative term which is factory method. I learned that factory method is a method, typically static, that returns an instance of a class and uses a constructor publicly or private. When too much work is required to get new instances when using constructors, it is always encouraged to resort to factory methods, although there are other cases where one could use factory methods.

I hope this blog is helpful to others as well.

https://blog.jetbrains.com/dotnet/2018/06/18/sharpen-sense-code-smell/

From the blog CS@Worcester – GreenApple by afua3254 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Expose Your Ignorance

Just like the title says this week I have read the pattern “Expose Your Ignorance” from “Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman” by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. This pattern describes how any aspiring developer should put aside their ego and be able to tell other about not knowing something and ask questions. It is about being able to admit that we do not know something and to start learning even if it means showing others your “ignorance”.

As always with this book and its chapters this hits close to home when it come to me and my work experience, as well as school in that matter. I found it interesting because it really shows me that it is not only me who can struggle with this particular pattern. My boss always tells me and my teammates during any meeting or code review: “you owe me at least two questions”, and this is the part that is described well in this chapter as well. The author says: “The most obvious way to expose your ignorance is to ask questions.”. I agree wholeheartedly with this statement, we have to be able to ask questions even if it shows our ignorance on the subject, but the sooner something like that is out there the sooner we can work and fixing the problem as well as better working with the team, since they will know that we might need some help.

The only part of this pattern that I do not agree with all the way is the same one I just mentioned. In my opinion there is a place and time to ask questions to expose one’s ignorance, but there are also times when holding them back until later is the right decision. One such time is when working directly with a customer, a particularly tough or difficult one. Or when having a meeting with a lot of higher ups at a company and your development team. Question on the subject are usually good but ignorant questions can have some unforeseen consequences in these situations. Overall, I agree with this pattern and the idea about having a list of things you do not understand and to update it periodically is in my opinion a very good idea.

From the blog #CS@Worcester – Pawel’s CS Experience by Pawel Stypulkowski and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns: Be The Worst

“Be the lions tail rather than the foxs head!”

I enjoyed doing the reading. It is protrayed well enough to understand the basic concept of how ones should emerge in the field of computer science.



Three things that I caught attention towards were: learning new skills, taking risks and surronding yourself with people who knows more then you.


There is a say that, hustle like a broke and live like a master.
What I have reviewed is that thinking that you are the weakest member of the team will make you eager to learn and work hard. In order to be the best version of yourself, you have to take risks.
There is no easy way. That is where your patience is tested.
If you fail, you learn, if you didn’t you are always one step closer.


Looking at the Software development companies. They took risks, worked hard and learned from others. That is how they are able to stand out in the Tech world.
To be a good developer you have to collaborate with great developers. It is not their time need it’s the skills that you need to learn. Surrounding yourself and being among them will give you motivation and positive energy to grow into the Software Development field.


This strategy can be applied in any field. maintain and give you the motivation to grow and not give up.



From the blog CS@Worcester – Tech a Talk -Arisha Khan by ajahan22 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Android Activities and Fragments: Getting Them Straight
			

								


				

			
AndroidX has brought a few changes to the Android framework, but the general architecture remains the same. Likewise, the few years since I’ve first learned Android has completely changed how I feel about Android. At this point, I am developing the basic architecture of my independent study app.


There are a lot of conflicting opinions about Activities and Fragments in the Android Developer community. A few years ago with my limited Android experience, I did not completely understand. I likely don’t completely understand now. However, I have better tools and more programming experience to see how they should be used, as well as to make my own decisions on how to use them.


At first, I found myself paralyzed with confusion on how Google wants its developers to use Activities and Fragments. As an example of how programming concepts translate well to other technologies, learning Angular helped me understand the difference. Activities are a single “thing” that a user does, and can be thought of as a web page. A Fragment should be used for a modular UI component, and function as Components do in Angular.


This isn’t a perfect analogy, as the frameworks are very different, but this is a good way to proceed when deciding how to structure your app. Google’s Introduction to App Architecture guide is a great explanation, and the most important thing to remember is to maintain a separation of concerns. In the end, Activities and Fragments aren’t a significant part of your app. They contain your app. They are something your app uses to work within the Android framework, and your business logic should be elsewhere because Android will pause or stop any Fragments or Activities it needs to if, for example, memory is running low. There is no guarantee they will maintain state unless you take additional steps to ensure it does so.


In researching opinions on how to use them, some people mentioned that they’ve seen developers decide on having a single Activity, and adding all features with Fragments. This is a tempting solution, but that might result in complex logic to control navigation. Furthermore, Fragments are meant to communicate through their parent Activity. In a large app, this would likely result in many implemented interfaces and complicated callbacks. Bloated Activities a big NO.


Likewise, others mentioned only using Activities and not adding complexity with Fragments. This seems a bit more reasonable, but restricts reusability of the Fragments in the UI. Only one Activity can run at a time. The beauty of Fragments is they can easily be dropped into a layout and reused. If they are designed to interact through their parent Activity, two Fragments can be shown at the same time on a larger tablet, even if they must be shown on different screens on a phone. Creating Activities only would mean either creating new Activities with repeated code for a tablet, or reusing the phone UI at the expense of user experience.


I’ll reiterate: separation of concerns. In Android, or any framework, understand the philosophy behind a class and component before deciding to try to simplify things. It’s likely that they were designed to prevent the problems you will run into.



From the blog CS@Worcester – Inquiries and Queries by James Young and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Concrete Skills
			

								


				

			
I have furthered my reading in Chapter 2 of the Apprenticeship Patterns this time about Concrete Skills. With all the romanticism of being an Apprentice and obtaining the ability to learn quickly this chapter really tells the other side of that. It does pay to bring a level of enthusiasm for learning to a team but in order to be hired on a team you need a point of persuasion. This is when concrete skills come into play. Examples described in this chapter are things like a basic knowledge of various industry popular languages, frameworks, and a well developed understanding of your native language. Having these basic, or concrete skills, allow you to show some sort of way that you can benefit a team indirectly with basic tasks before you learn how to directly help.


This chapter addresses something I often think about. Some questions that run through my head, “What are the basic skills I need for getting my first job?”, “Am I expected to know what they are developing and how to contribute, or will they teach me?”. The truth is you can’t know about a development project before you are part of it. How things are done and what the scope is, will have to be learned as you go. Then my first question of what it is I need to know beforehand becomes more clear. My concrete skills need to be further developed, I need to explore more now at this stage in my career. 


I often feel the pull to my familiar skills when presented with a project. I need to use Java because that’s what I know, I need to use this IDE, I need to use this Database. However, it’s interesting as I read this book I see my development toward these goals presented in each chapter. The reading helps solidify my exploration into the unknown. The start of this semester I thought I would only use my most used IDE and the database I was used to using. As the semester got going I began to use a new IDE that seemed to better fit my interests after I took the step to get familiar with it. I also took the chance to learn about a new database application that better fit the needs of the project rather than catering to my familiarity. My next goal is to learn a basic understanding of a few more popular languages.


Developing these concrete skills is just as important as unleashing your enthusiasm for learning. Both are beneficial for a team but concrete skills will give you a practical use upon hiring.



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

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Craft Over Art: or how I learned to stop worrying and love my ugly UI
			

								


				

			
As I mentioned last week, I have a tendency to try to make products out of projects; meaning I can’t just have something to tinker with for fun, it needs to essentially be a rough draft for the actual project I have to work on. In the same vein, I have another hang-up on wanting things to be clean and pretty to start. Now, of course, one should strive for well formatted code following best practices, but specifically for those projects with a user interface I try to go straight to a finished product from the start. As a result, the Craft Over Art Pattern was illuminating, bringing into focus where my priorities should lie especially in contrast to where they are currently.


In sum, this pattern emphasizes that you have been charged with creating a functioning product, not necessarily a pretty one. The line, “the things we build for customers can be beautiful, but must be useful” says it all. I realize in constantly polishing a project before its feature complete, I end up throwing away a lot of work spent on “dolling up” features or elements of the user interface that may change or not even be used. I even caught myself making the same mistake even on a personal project using a different web application language, where I did not even attempt to make any forms or methods that communicated to the backend, instead spending time adding libraries for user interface elements that look nice and animate well. While there is certainly a place for those things, this pattern helps one understand that is when you have all of the parts of your application finalized.


I should have learned this lesson last semester with my final project. I spent so much time fiddling with the color palette and page animations, that the content on those pages was barren, or poorly formatted. It is nice, I think, that my webpage looks and animates nicely, but when pages break upon reloading then it hardly matters. If there is constantly some expectation of failure with a project, then the font you choose is hardly relevant. I think that is what this pattern helped me realize most about this weakness of mine; utility is the most important aspect of software, everything else is so much fluff.



From the blog CS@Worcester – Press Here for Worms by wurmpress and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Apprenticeship Pattern Review 2: The Deep End
			

								


				

			
“The Deep End” is another extremely useful pattern taken from Apprenticeship Patterns. This pattern is best used when you feel as though you are stuck in a rut and not much progress is being made to further your software development career. In order to save yourself from a career of mediocrity something must be done. “The Deep End” prescribes the developer to set aside fear and jump into a project greater than anything they’ve done before. While this could end in failure, even failure is a better outcome than never starting in the first place since so much knowledge will be gained in the process. More often than not, it seems as though jumping into a project that seems too complex or too large when compared to previous work tends to be the best way to supercharge your learning.


I agree with this pattern wholeheartedly. I have already acquired countless examples in my relatively short career of software development where forgoing my fears and jumping into a project that I didn’t know I could complete helped me get out of a rut. One of the hardest things for me to remember is to keep jumping into “the deep end” whenever I can instead of getting into ruts of self doubt and fear. I also agree with Hoover and Oshineye that while this notion of “the deep end” is a key to becoming a software craftsman, one can not blindly jump into a project that is way beyond their comprehension and expect to swim. It is extremely important to take into consideration the prep work and skills at your disposal when deciding if an opportunity is right for you. While I do think the idea of recording the size of projects you have worked on could help when utilizing this pattern, I don’t think its necessary. Instead of getting bogged down by wondering if the project you want to work on is bigger or more complex than the last I think the most important thing is that you take the leap and start working on the projects that can propel your career forward.


This pattern will stick with me because I’ve seen it work in my own career previously, yet I’ve never had a concrete pattern to remind me of it. It will come in handy when I’m working on my capstone project. It’s imperative that I never let fear get the best of me and I instead choose to continue working through problems that I think there’s a possibility I fail at. I will keep this pattern close at all times and whenever I feel like declining an opportunity because of fear I will remind myself of “The Deep End”.


 



From the blog CS@Worcester – Your Friendly Neighborhood Programming Blog by John Pacheco and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Confront Your Ignorance
			

								


				

			
This week, I’d like to discuss the next step from last week’s apprenticeship pattern. Once you’ve exposed your ignorance to others and realized it yourself, you have to own it and fix it. If others can’t help you, you’re on your own.


This pattern can be used in isolation, without showing others. This is helpful if it’s something very basic which would be embarrassing to admit to, or something you lied about knowing, which is never a good idea. The downside to learning on your own is an isolationist mindset. In a team where everyone is working on their own, this could create a culture where ignorance is frowned upon.


I generally agree with the ideas in this pattern. It is good to keep its downsides in mind, especially since I know I generally prefer to learn on my own. Sometimes, it is simply more efficient. In college, I’ve saved about 2 semesters’ worth of time (and money) by taking CLEP exams, learning the material on my own. For some subjects, it’s simply much more efficient to create my own study guide, find the gaps in my knowledge, and fill them in.


The result of doing so has been much clearer, broader, and more detailed understanding of the subject matter as a whole than I would have otherwise had taking a class. Taking a single exam held me more accountable than a class generally does, which is broken up into smaller assignments with the goal of preparing you for the final exam.


This would never be the case for learning to work on a software team, as we are in our software development capstone. Reading about Agile won’t make you an expert in Agile. Collaboration is a practice.


While not always ideal, I think this pattern can be extrapolated to professional applications. If you’re learning a technology on your own, you don’t know what someone might ask of you. The pressure is on to learn as much as you possibly can. If your goal is to appear as knowledgeable in a subject as possible, this pattern might be the way to go.


The warning against taking this pattern to the extreme is valid in cases of working with a team. It is important to use discretion when choosing between exposing ignorance to others, or confronting it on your own. I plan to lean toward exposing ignorance and asking for help in the future.



From the blog CS@Worcester – Inquiries and Queries by James Young and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
					

		
		
	


	

				

			
						

				Understanding Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
			

								


				

			
While good testing and version control habits are always helpful and save a lot of time, the process of committing changes, running tests, and deploying the changes can in itself be time consuming. This is especially true in an agile development process, which aims to make small, incremental changes in a series of sprints. Ideally, the process of committing, testing and delivering could be done in a single command.


This is where CI/CD comes in. An Oracle blog post on CI/CD describes the software development pipeline as being a four-step process: commit, build, automated tests, and deploy. CI/CD involves automating this process so that a single commit results in changes deployed to production, so long as the changes can be built and pass the tests. However, any of these stages can be skipped and not all of them have to be automated if it doesn’t make sense to do so. Additionally, other stages can be added if desired.


Oracle stresses the importance of testing in this process, and the requirement to have a suite of unit, integration, and systems tests. These are important to have for any project, but are vital if a commit is automatically deployed to production to make sure users are getting a reliable product.


Gitlab uses Runners to run the jobs defined in a file named “.gitlab-ci.yml”. Jobs can be defined in the stages mentioned above, or any arbitrary number of custom stages, to create a single pipeline. When a commit is made, the pipeline lists the stages and whether they pass. Of course, unit tests should be run before a commit to ensure that the code is behaving as expected, but once a change is committed the rest of pipeline can be automatic.


In large systems, this automation is especially useful. You may be not able to compile an entire code base on a local machine. You may not be working on the same schedule as the rest of your team. Automating other portions of testing and deployment allows a single developer to finish a feature or patch on their own and reliably get it into the hands of users.


In researching software engineering jobs, it seems that many companies use Docker as part of their CI/CD process. Imagine you want to make sure your software runs on Mac and Windows machines. Docker can use predefined images to build isolated containers in which the code can be run. A pipeline can contain separate build stages, for example, to make sure the code builds on both operating systems before running tests and deploying. Next week, I will look at Docker in more detail and describe how it can be applied to software testing.



From the blog CS@Worcester – Inquiries and Queries by ausausdauer and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.