Category Archives: Week 4

Apprenticeship Pattern “Unleash Your Enthusiasm”

What I have found interesting is about this apprenticeship pattern is that those who are enthusiastic about the work they do might not fit into their future team. It is a worrisome thing and that although there are ways to nurture your skills outside of work, most people tend to look at work as a way to work with others and expand their knowledge in software engineering. I had never thought that being enthusiastic could be detrimental to a team, but it makes sense that already existing teams probably do want to deliver on projects and their work instead of helping someone new out. It was nice to read that teams that are comfortable with themselves do beneficial from a fresh new mind and injecting them with excitement and questions will be beneficial to the team.

What I found most interesting when reading about this pattern is that as a soon to be graduate, we have the most excitement about the future of growing in our careers and that this pattern tells us that it is time in our careers to take the most risk and to speak our mind. We have very little to lose staring out and our ideas and passion will be more beneficial than detrimental to our team. As an apprentice, expressing ourselves is what we should be doing and it’s healthier for us to grow as a person that way. Instead of worrying about fitting into a future team, we should worry about being that spark that brings new ways of improving the team.

I as a person am very enthusiastic about everything I do. It does worry me that I might not fit into the team I work with in the future, but I hope that everything that I bring to the table is something that can help everyone. This pattern does make me thing about how important it is to work with my team and that hopefully my enthusiasm as a new graduate can help elevate my team to the next level. I also have experienced times where I have brought up ideas to engineers and then they shoot me down, but I had never thought about asking about how to improve my suggestion instead of just letting it go. This solution is a great way to figure out how to do better instead of thinking that your ideas are not good enough.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Life as a CS Student by Dylan Nguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Post #2 for Apprenticeship Patterns: Perpetual Learning: Breaking Toys

The Breakable Toys describes how to set up a situation where you can continue to learn and make progress with your career without unduly affecting your performance as a developer on your “day job”. The idea is to create a home-based work environment where you can develop product to enhance your skill set by making small products on your own. If these fail, or turn out to be flawed in some way, there is no downside, because you are expected to have learned lessons on your own. Although most work-paces are reasonable when your coding doesn’t come out perfect the first time, it certainly is much better for your career if you develop working, useful, optimal code in a reasonable time frame.

Many developers don’t have the time or inclination to do this, and turn out to be productive employees, but those who guide their own career by making their own products on the side are much more likely to succeed both intellectually and financially.

Throughout my career, I have always been motivated to keep up with the current journals, attend classes and conferences, and to always have a product I was developing on my own. In the 1990’s I developed a music-based utility program for guitarists called “Guitar Companion”. It’s most impressive component was a notation editor, but it also had a metronome, tuning fork, band manager component, and 3 CD’s with Video Guitar Lessons. I wrote it in Visual C++. But over the years, converted it to new technologies, and sold it through a website I had constructed fo4r this purpose.

From 2010 to 2015, I developed a number of Android applications for musicians. The one that turned out the best I sold on Google Play and had over 20,000 downloads.

This was all great for my career growth, but I would have never done this if I were not passionate enough to put in the time and effort. I highly recommend this approach to anyone who really loves to code. You are your own CEO. You call all the shots. You become sought after by companies, because you have developed depth in your code base that few can attain working under the strict protocol of working for someone else.

It also works in reverse. I would incorporate functionality into my “Toy” products that I learned at job-sites, as well as using things I wrote at home into my work products. It is pretty great when a boss asks during a scrum “who knows how to do X”, and you raise your hand. “ I do”.

From the blog cs@worcester – (Twinstar Blogland) by Joe Barry and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Expose Your Ignorance

Next week, my second Sprint will start. My team worked really well last Sprint that we met all the initial objectives; however, the context was we reimplemented something that we’ve already known or heard about, which only needs a bit more searching in order to fully commit the work. This second Sprint we are going to have lots more “abstract” topics, materials that we weren’t familiar with, so I expect we might get frustrated, overwhelmed when we come to it.

This situation might somewhat be similar to what I’ve read in the “Expose Your Ignorance” section, the only difference is that I’m not in a nine to five working environment. Per description from the book, we have been brought in some projects that we are unfamiliar with some of the required technologies; but team members believe that we can deliver because we have a deep understanding of the business domain or some other aspect of the technology stack being used in a team, or perhaps we are the only person available to do the job. In my view, learning and implementing what the team needs while carrying their expectations is difficult, especially when it is something that we have no experience in.

Finding myself falling into this issue in no time, I might consider taking the solution written in the book which is to show my teammates that the learning process is part of delivering software. Therefore, knowing how to learn the technology effectively is important because I should know which part of my current project will need this and go straight to documentation with relevant information on it. Furthermore, asking questions, instead of hiding our issues, exposes it to everyone in the team because no one will be annoyed when we show them what we cannot do, instead, not telling them that you are having problems is what keeps the team behind.

Luckily, I consider myself a bit “figurative” when it comes to asking questions since I don’t mind asking anything that I didn’t understand. Compared to myself 3 years ago, it’s a huge difference as I was that shy guy hiding my weaknesses, I find learning is much more efficient when I can ask everyone what I don’t know, of course, after a period of time thinking and testing and implementing. Having questions is a good practice, but it doesn’t mean that we should ask without already researching it.

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

Apprenticeship Pattern “Kindred Spirits”

For this week’s blog post, I decided to review a chapter about a topic that I have thought about a lot. The topic that I am reviewing this week is the importance of mentors and finding kindred spirits. For those of you who does not know what a kindred spirit is, a kindred spirit is someone who shares your interests or attitude about a topic. I find this topic interesting because it is a topic that I have thought a lot about. In the past, when I was a Mathematics major, I felt like I had found a lot of kindred spirits. I used to spend a lot of time in the math lab and center solving math problems with these people. When I think back about those days, I view it as some of my most productive years in my undergraduate career. I used to be very studious and was very motivated to be in school. As people within the group graduated one by one, I found myself at a loss and became very unmotivated. This is why I found the first segment of the section interesting because it talks about the importance of finding kindred spirits in order to stay motivated. One line from that section that stuck to me was the line about the impact of having a relationship with a kindred spirit. Some relationships may be short but may make a major impact in a person’s life. This was how I felt about the relationships I formed when I was a math major. The time I spent with those people may have been brief but the time we did spend together did feel meaningful and I would not have had it any other way. One thing this chapter has changed is how I thought finding new kindred spirits. After the last of the group graduated, I tried finding other kindred spirits in those who were still there, but I did not feel that same connection. So, I have always tried finding kindred spirits by physical vicinity. I have always thought of myself as a follower so one thing that the chapter brought up that I never really thought is why don’t I just a start a group of my own. This thought was something that went over my head and is something I think I may consider some time in the future.

Another topic that the chapter talked about is the topic of group thought. I think this is a very relative issue that needs to be addressed when thinking about creating a group and I think there should be precautions in place to ensure that the group can still have healthy debates.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Just a Guy Passing By by Eric Nguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns: Breakable Toys

                We all grew up with a favorite toy at some point or another weather that be a doll, a car, bike, computer, lego, etc. At one point or another they may have broken in some way and when that happened you could either throw it out and be done with it or attempt to fix it or find another use for it. This is exactly the idea behind the breakable toy pattern described in ‘Apprenticeship Patterns’. As a software craftsman many workplaces will leave little room for failure and thus little room to learn from those failures. Many of us in today’s workplace are expected to know how to use tools given to us without time to experiment and fail to use those tools.

This aversion to failure often stunts the learning process in many people as failure is one of the best teachers there is. Being able to safely fail in a private space where you can learn from and fix your mistakes at your own pace is healthy to the learning experience. Breakable toys are essentially an implementation of a commonly used tool that you may be inexperienced with. This toy can be simple as long as it applies to your work, your life, and is pleasing to work on. As Hoover and Oshineye describe in ‘Apprenticeship Patterns’ you can create anything from a wiki page, to games, to even a calendar or even blogging software.

Creating a breakable piece of software that won’t affect anyone should it break gives you the opportunity to experiment without worrying about failure while reinforcing what you do or do not know about a certain tool, giving you a sandbox to play with to deepen your knowledge of said tool. Our toolsets are always changing as software craftsmen and being able to keep up with this quickly evolving trade is arguably the most important part of being a software craftsmen. I whole heartedly believe this to be a great place to create breakable toys as I have with my own website.

If you are turning up few ideas of what you can do then consider the idea left at the end of this chapter by Hoover and Oshineye. Create a wiki page for yourself, it can be about whatever you want and start as simple as being able to edit plane text documents. Over time as you learn more about Web Design, HTML, and other tools involved you may add features that will distinguish it from other wiki pages. Keep this breakable toy or create new ones as you learn, so long as you allow yourself to fail you can take advantage of it and enrich your own experience.

Hoover, Dave H., and Adewale Oshineye. Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman. O’Reilly, 2010.

From the blog CS@Worcester – George Chyoghly CS-343 by gchyoghly and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Craftsmanship Log #2 – Recording What I Learn

I feel the need to underline that the patterns discussed in the book “Apprenticeship Patterns” do not exist in a vacuum, though conceptually they can be considered as independent concepts. In fact, it is possible, in one way or another, to utilize multiple apprenticeship patterns at once without realizing it. In my latest post, I briefly went over the apprenticeship pattern related to a programmer’s first language, aptly named as “Your First Language”. Looking back on my learning approach to C (my first programming language), I notice that my learning process included a combination of this pattern with other patterns named “Record What You Learn” and “Breakable Toys”, which former pattern I mentioned briefly in my first post about the book “Apprenticeship Patterns”.

As the name of the pattern suggests, “Record What You Learn” is a pattern that is mean to address a software developer’s (or a learner’s, regardless of the subject) potential negligence of making sure to keep a record of the concept’s that they may encounter during the learning process. Such negligence brings the risk of the developer losing important knowledge, thus facing issues when they encounter a problem, they need to solve for which they have an extremely vague idea, at best, of how to find and implement solutions.  In this case, a helpful solution to this problem is for the learner to begin developing and maintain the habit of keeping records of anything that they learn as they learn it, either on a blog or wiki. However, it is important for anyone who records their learning process in such a way to make sure that they actually utilize what they record continuously rather than simply dump their thoughts in a blog post and immediately forget what they were supposed to be learning in the first place.

In my own experience, recording what I learn either in the way of making private journals or code repositories has helped me in my learning process tremendously. On one hand, keeping an organized archive of concepts I have learnt, along with specific sources and examples (not too different from this blog), has made it easier for me to quickly go back and refresh myself on knowledge that I feel I can use for problem-solving. Moreover, going through the process of writing a journal of the things I learn helps me internalize new concepts much better, especially with respect to code. Perhaps this pattern is especially helpful for people like me, who need to write down what they learn since it is a much more helpful way of learning.  

From the blog CS@Worcester – CompSci Log by sohoda and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns: The White Belt

Christian Shadis

2/26/2022

In the apprenticeship pattern The White Belt, Hoover and Oshineye explore the importance of maintaining a beginner’s mindset even when already a subject matter expert. They attribute this largely to creativity and open mindedness in problem solving: a programmer who is an expert in Language A should act as though they are a complete beginner in Language B to avoid their prior knowledge restricting them from learning all techniques and conventions of the new language.

The whole pattern seems counterintuitive at first, but a small example illustrates the concept more clearly. If a Java programmer wanted to join two lists together in Python, but by only using their Java knowledge, their solution would undoubtedly be far more complicated than a simple list comprehension that Python allows. Putting aside prior knowledge in favor of re-learning problem solving methods would allow that same programmer to utilize Python’s list comprehensions. In a more general sense, by ‘taking off the black belt’ and ‘putting on the white belt’, a developer can learn best practices and technically efficient problem-solving techniques in any language, which will further bolster their overall programming skills and employability.

This pattern also shifted my perspective toward my education so far at Worcester State. Over the past few years, I had found myself frustrated with the methodology of the Computer Science department, which I believe is rooted in giving students exposure to as many elements in the software development world as possible. My frustration lied in the fact that we, for the most part, didn’t do very deep dives on any language or technology. After reading this pattern though, I realize this approach was about showing us as many different things as possible to prepare us to do just what this pattern teaches: learn new technologies and languages as your career develops, rather than becoming a subject matter expert and looking at the rest of your development career through the lens of that subject.

I hope to use this pattern throughout my career, but more specifically I plan to implement this pattern while I continue to learn Object-Oriented Programming languages, especially Python. Most of my OOP code has been written in Java, yet I consider myself fluent in Python. This is a clear example of letting my knowledge in Java prevent me from re-learning object-oriented programming in Python, which would harm my performance in a Python assessment or interview. In this case, and throughout my career, I will make the decision to set aside my knowledge to re-learn the fundamentals through a separate lens to enrich my understanding of the subject.

Reference:

Hoover, D. H., & Oshineye, A. (2010). Emptying the Cup. In Apprenticeship patterns: Guidance for the aspiring software craftsman. O’Reilly.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Christian Shadis' Blog by ctshadis and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Concrete Skills Pattern

For this week’s apprenticeship pattern, I did a reading on “Concrete Skills”. Concrete skills are a pattern that I feel like I am currently experiencing. Concrete skills is about acquiring and maintaining skills that enables you to be ‘trusted’ by companies so they’re more likely to hire you. Concrete skills are supposed to reassure future team members that you are capable of doing the tasks that would be assigned by you and wouldn’t need to be babysat during the process. These types of skills are considered to be the basic of any programing language or knowledge. These are usually tested when you are being interviewed by current software engineers at a company that are simply just testing your knowledge. A great solution to anyone who has this problem is to work on side projects and casually review how basic functions work in your chosen language.

My initial reaction after reading this pattern is that it is a reflection of what I am currently experiencing. Since I have limited experience in the professional field of software engineering, I am currently requiring hiring managers “to take a leap of faith” in choosing me to work at their company, as the book says. The reading was quite interesting and very useful. Interesting because I can relate to what it is talking about and useful because it helps me with my current job hunt and figuring out ways to tackle this issue. Even before reading this pattern, I’ve been trying to practice more concrete skills and building side projects that will help me with the journey of becoming a software engineer.

The pattern has not changed the way how I view my profession because I already had an idea of how HR and the process works. The hard part of any job is getting selected for the interview process and for me, since I have no real type of internships, it is much harder. I do however have that I’ve worked in companies with good positions but they’re not entirely “software engineering” related. Therefore, I am constantly practicing my skills and working on side projects that I can showcase on my resume and be able to answer questions that are thrown at me if I were to get selected for an interview.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Michael's Developer Blog by michaelchaau and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The White Belt

For this week’s blog post, I have decided to look at the apprenticeship pattern “The White Belt”. This chapter talks about how you have gained a deep understanding of your first language and have become confident. However, you are struggling to learn new things and it has become more difficult to learn new skills. The main idea of this chapter is to wear a white belt and forget everything you have been taught thus far and learn from someone with a blackbelt. Dave H. Hoover & Adewale Oshineye, the authors of the book, say on this, “Wearing the white belt is based on the realization that while the black belt knows the way, the white belt has no choice but to learn the way”. (Dave H. Hoover & Adewale Oshineye). As discussed in the text, when you take this approach in learning some new material this will accelerate your learning process tremendously. When you take this step towards ignorance, you can express yourself idiomatically and gain a far better understanding of your new knowledge. This way when you consider both what you learned and your old knowledge you have developed productive insights in both fields.

What I found interesting about this pattern was that it’s like what we learned in the chapter “Your First Language”. In that chapter it mentioned finding a main language but not forgetting about what you learned in the past. With this chapter we can apply both knowledges and expand on our main language. By being able to take a step back you can develop your skills in a way that I didn’t eve think about. Now knowing this knowledge, it has made me rec consider what I would be doing out in the real world at my profession. If presented with a problem that I have no past knowledge about, instead of trying to guess what the solution to it would be I can ask someone who knows, a.k.a a blackbelt, and expand my knowledge of the subject. With everything I Have learned I both chapters, this gets me excited to go out into the world and gain more knowledge to become a “blackbelt”.

Book: Apprenticeship Patterns, Dave H. Hoover & Adewale Oshineye

From the blog CS@worcester – Michale Friedrich by mikefriedrich1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

CS 448 Post #1

I wanted to do my first post on the first pattern we are given in chapter 2 because it is the start of delving into the patterns we will be working with after chapter 1 and start of chapter 2 introducing what the book will be about. The first pattern here is “Your First Language”, and it talks getting started with programming languages and how you can start and improve at working with one. It is recommended to start with one language and take time to learn and get used to it so that you are fluent in it. Solving problems using this language can also help you gain experience and get a better understanding. You will want to spend enough time with the language to become fluent in it, but keeping the introduction to the book and chapter 2 in mind, you don’t want to get stuck with it and instead want to be able to learn other languages after the first one.

I think that it is smart to focus on one language when starting out before moving onto others, and having problems to solve with that language can be very helpful at understanding and working with that language. It reminded me of doing worksheets or assignments in school for a subject after doing studying and some practice. It is also good to not start trying to learn multiple languages at once because some of what you learn from them may start to get mixed up, and starting with one language before moving onto others and possibly doing multiple languages simultaneously is the smarter route to take. In my past CS courses, we were taking time with a language before moving on the next one, working on and solving problems with that language. Because of that, I have seen how effective this way of learning languages is.

I thought that this was a great first pattern and problem to go over after the first chapter and the second chapter’s introduction, since this book is going to go over many other patterns in this chapter and later chapters, and this pattern covers the starting point for readers and programmers learning new languages.

From the blog Jeffery Neal's Blog by jneal44 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.