This week, I will be writing a reflection on the “Nurture Your Passion” pattern.  This pattern addresses developers who feel that their work environment is stifling their passion for the craft.  I don’t have any personal experience with this problem, but I wanted to reflect on this pattern because I found the advice about how to nurture your passion to be quite useful.

The first bit of advice, provided by Oshineye and Hoover, is to work on things that you like and spend time building Breakable Toys, which I reflected on in the previous post of this series.  The second bit of advice they provide is to seek out kindred spirits, or, other people who are also passionate about software development.  They recommend seeking out a group that focuses on something you want to learn about, and keeping a blog about things that interest you in the field of software development.  The third bit of advice they provide is to immerse yourself in the literature of software development.  This tip, in particular, felt relevant and useful to me because I have begun seeking out literature that can help me acquire knowledge and skills that will improve my employability.  Oshineye and Hoover make the point that studying the classes and becoming immersed in relevant literature can help reignite your passion for the craft.  I still feel very passionate about software development, but I will heed this advice and refer to it in the future if I ever find myself in a rough place.  The next piece of advice they provide is to draw your own map, which means to seek out organizations that will offer career paths that you have a passion for.  Their final piece of advice is to not be discouraged by demoralizing tasks and coworkers, and to set clear boundaries that define the kind of environment you are willing to work in.

I think that I have been doing a good job of nurturing my passion, so it is a positive reinforcement to find patterns like this one, in the book.  I am still passionate about software craftsmanship, and I don’t see it diminishing anytime in the near future.  This pattern has further strengthened my foundation and provided me with advice that I will continue to carry with me, as a developer.

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

I chose this topic because we will be using it for projects. Wanted to know more about it, get some trick and also share it among the pupils. Also i have come to notice most companies in the web development require a potential employee to have this kind of programming language. At least an understanding of it.

AngularJS is a structural framework for dynamic web apps. It lets you use HTML as your template language and lets you extend HTML’s syntax to express your application’s components clearly and succinctly. AngularJS’s data binding and dependency injection eliminate much of the code you would otherwise have to write. And it all happens within the browser, making it an ideal partner with any server technology.

AngularJS is what HTML would have been, had it been designed for applications. HTML is a great declarative language for static documents. It does not contain much in the way of creating applications, and as a result building web applications is an exercise in what do I have to do to trick the browser into doing what I want?

The impedance mismatch between dynamic applications and static documents is often solved with:

• a library – a collection of functions which are useful when writing web apps. Your code is in charge and it calls into the library when it sees fit. E.g., jQuery.
• frameworks – a particular implementation of a web application, where your code fills in the details. The framework is in charge and it calls into your code when it needs something app specific. E.g., durandal, ember, etc.

AngularJS takes another approach. It attempts to minimize the impedance mismatch between document centric HTML and what an application needs by creating new HTML constructs. AngularJS teaches the browser new syntax through a construct we call directives. Examples include:

• Data binding, as in {{}}.
• DOM control structures for repeating, showing and hiding DOM fragments.
• Support for forms and form validation.
• Attaching new behavior to DOM elements, such as DOM event handling.
• Grouping of HTML into reusable components.

A complete client-side solution

AngularJS is not a single piece in the overall puzzle of building the client-side of a web application. It handles all of the DOM and AJAX glue code you once wrote by hand and puts it in a well-defined structure. This makes AngularJS opinionated about how a CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) application should be built. But while it is opinionated, it also tries to make sure that its opinion is just a starting point you can easily change. AngularJS comes with the following out-of-the-box:

• Everything you need to build a CRUD app in a cohesive set: Data-binding, basic templating directives, form validation, routing, deep-linking, reusable components and dependency injection.
• Testability story: Unit-testing, end-to-end testing, mocks and test harnesses.
• Seed application with directory layout and test scripts as a starting point.

Example ::

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/angularjs/1.6.4/angular.min.js
<body>

</body>
</html>

I have learned a lot about Angularjs. You can do a whole lot just on a single page without refreshing it or changing the page. Which is very efficient. I normally use jquery for my programming in web development but comparing it with Angularjs, i think Anjularjs is far easy, efficient than jquery. I might be wrong since i have not learned into it so deep. but for the small coding i did, was very easy and understandable.

Links::https://docs.angularjs.org/guide/introduction

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

So for this week, I have decided to read about “The SOLID principles in real life” from the Infragistics blog. The reason I have chosen this blog is because while I do get the concept for each of them that which will guide me to writing clean code, I need a better grasp to put these principles into practice and not be limited that is just following a set of rules. This relates towards in making design patterns that which by using these practices, design patterns become a lot easier to implement.

For this blog post, it basically goes over the five principles of object oriented programming that which makes the acronym SOLID with real life analogs by the author.  For the first letter of the acronym S, this stands for Single Responsibility Principle. It asserts that a class or module should do one thing only. The purpose with this principle is to fight complexity while developing an application’s logic. For the second of the acronym O, this stands for Open/Closed Principle. It states that code entities should be open for extensions like extending certain behaviors but closed for modifications to achieve a flexible system architecture which is the purpose. The next letter of the acronym, L, stands for Liskov Subsitution Principle. This principle basically asserts that parent instances should be replaceable for the child instance without creating unexpecting behavioral problems. The fourth letter of the acronym, I, stands for Interface Segregation Principle. It states that main instances or classes should be segregated into smaller classes to use methods that is needed.  Lastly but not least, D stands for Dependency Inversion Principle. It encourages user to write code that depends upon abstractions than concrete details to give flexibility in it.

Based on the contents of this blog post, I would say that this was very good to read. Purposes of each principle was straightforward and easy to pick up upon while reading it. That is because the author uses real life analogs to give clear visualizations how the principles work in an effective way.  For my experience with the concepts of SOLID, I would try to use sample design patterns and go by each of the principle to gain a bit of practice in implementing clean codes.

From this blog about the SOLID principles, what I learned is that the Interface Segregation and Dependency Inversion should be the ones to take mostly into account. The ideas that I have been taught is that it will avoid having the code to re-compile with annoying frequency and swapping in anything that conforms to the abstraction will be easier. Learning the ideas from this blog shows me that for future practice, I should be trying to visualize the SOLID principles with real life perspectives as it will help in the logic of building system architecture and design patterns. I hope that with this knowledge, achievement of an extendable codebase is possible.

-Dennis Tran

Link to the blog: https://www.infragistics.com/community/blogs/erikdietrich/archive/2016/01/26/the-solid-principles-in-real-life.aspx

From the blog CS@Worcester – Onwards to becoming an expert developer by dtran365 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The blog post this is written about can be found here.

I’ve been hearing words like waterfall and agile a lot in the course of researching software development and testing for my classes, so this week I tracked down a simple blog post explaining the difference in the two development methods. The descriptions of the two lined up with the two sides pitted against each other in the time-travel argument I wrote about for the other class.

The earlier method, waterfall, is a sequential scheme in which development is split into eight stages and one stage of development follows the other with no overlap. This is a technique I’d actually heard explained unattached to the name waterfall prior to this year. In other resources, it seems to be mostly referred to in terms of its disadvantages. This post lists some of the advantages of the method. There’s no room for errors or modification when you can’t go back to the previous step without starting the whole process over again. As a consequence, extensive planning and documentation is a requirement. The waterfall methodology can to some extent ensure a very clear picture of the final product, and the documentation serves as a resource for making improvements in the future.

However, there are significant downsides that led to the creation of the agile methodology. The dependence on initial requirements means that if the requirements are incomplete or in error, the resulting software will be too. If the problems with the requirements are discovered, the developers will have to start over. All testing is pushed to the end, which means that if bugs were created early, they could have had an impact on code written later. The whole thing is a recipe for the project taking a very long time.

In contrast, developers using the agile methodology start with a simple design and then begin working on small modules for set intervals of time called sprints. After every sprint, testing is done and priorities are reexamined. Bugs are discovered and fixed quicker in this way, and the method is highly adaptable to changing requirements. This approach tends to be much quicker and is favored in modern development. It allows for adaptation to rapid changes in industry standards, the fast release of a working piece of software, and the ability for a client to give feedback and see immediate changes. The lack of a definitive plan at the beginning can be a drawback.

Having a clear picture of both of these methodologies provides useful context that will enable me to follow more in-depth discussions of software development, and there’s a good chance it will be relevant to my future career.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Fun in Function by funinfunction and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

https://www.artofsoftwaredevelopment.com/art-or-engineering/is-it-art-or-engineering

This blog is on the topic of art of software development. The author believes the software development is like art. He also explains why it matters. Teaching someone about software development with the concepts and technique of programming is similar to teaching someone about art. Both difficult and challenging. The final product depends on the student and mentor. The author compares telling a programer how to write a program to someone telling Van Gough how paint his masterpieces. Both end with negative results. Similar the final product of an artwork depends on the student and mentor’s insight.  The author briefly gives us the definition from engineering and art both which come from Wikipedia. Engineering is “the application of scientific, economic, social and practical knowledge in order o build, invent, maintain, research, and improve structure, machines, devices systems, material and process.” Art is “a diverse range of human activities and the products of those actives usually involving imagination or technical skill.” He then states software development comes from the imagination and technology of humans. Software developers can choose the founding blocks for their programs to make it run. The author concludes that yes software development is in a way a form of art and engineering. Like artists, developers need the freedom  to choose how to code and write the program. They can write a program for a client within a certain parameter, but still need the freedom to do it how they want to. Give the programmer too much of a restriction on the program and they won’t have enough freedom or space to create the program and make it run properly. The author does not fully explain on why it matter, he gives his opinion on what he thinks then leaves the question open ended for reader to decide for themselves.

Again, I liked this blog. I agree with the author of software development being a mix of both art and engineering. You need a creative mind to create a program but you also the technical skills to know how to run the program. Again this gives me an idea of how developers work and what they can do.  I have always seen programming as a type of art. My parents have told me I’m artistic with technology and learning how to write programs. I have always been able to figure out how technology works, and figure out how to fix them if theres is a problem.

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by rens14 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

After learning more about JUnit testing I found this blog that really emphasized what we can do to keep our test code just as clean as our program code. You can find the blog here: https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2016/01/writing-better-tests-junit/

The beginning of the blog goes through the value of testing code and the importance of living documentation to help people that join your team half-way through a project. You should read that part if you want to, but my main focus of this blog is the basis of keeping the testing code clean and understandable so that people can understand what is actually going on.

Behaviors!

One way to write better test cases in JUnit is to test behaviors and not implementation. Writing test cases based on implementations will lead to fragile tests that break easily.  The blog gives the definition of behavior as “the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with themselves or their environment”.  I could not find a better way to word it then what the blog had here:  “”Range of actions and mannerisms” – this explicitly limits our view to what is observable from the outside. If we refrain from disclosing internals, and phrase our tests accordingly, they should become much more flexible, and enable us to refactor, replace and/or rewrite large parts of the production code without additional effort” Essentially, we shouldn’t be testing specific variables but rather the universal behavior of the methods on their environments.

Context Grouping

Another helpful technique to make your tests look as clean and understandable as possible is to group the tests by context. This means that you write your tests in a type of hierarchy.  In the blog they use the form “Given-When-Then”  meaning you should write your tests in a hierarchy like this:

This creates a tree of tests in the JUnit Runner window like this:

This is a huge tip to keeping  testing code clean and easy to read, which I had not known about previously.

Single Assertion Rule

This is another tip that will certainly help me keep my tests cleaner because I had not heard of this before. The single assertion rule is just a way of saying that you should only have a one Assert.assertEquals(). This is because it makes looking for why the test failed that much easier, only looking at one value instead of two or more assert values.

Meaningful Names

This one has always been important. Make sure to use descriptive names rather than generic variable names like “x”, “data”, “input”. For example you could use “inputFromEveryDataFile” to improve on the name “input” if you were actually reading all the data from every file.

There are many more…

There are many tips out there to writing more clean and readable test code for JUnit. I couldn’t possibly document every single one! There is no such thing as code that is “too easy” to read so keep cleaning!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Rookey Mistake by Shane Rookey and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.