Category Archives: Week 8

Concrete Skills

This week I chose to look at the “Concrete Skills” pattern. This pattern explains that you need concrete skills to be able to get a job and contribute to the team you are joining. Concrete skills mean discrete abilities you can demonstrate using specific technologies. Something like understanding and being able to apply a certain framework or being able to write docker compose files. Things beyond soft skills like being able to learn quickly and having a good attitude. Creating a toy project can help show your concrete skills to employers and comparing your CV to the CVs of people whose skills you respect can help you take stock of where your own abilities stand.

I found this pattern interesting because it is a very helpful thing to think about when writing a resume or CV. Especially in a technical field like software development, you need to have very specific skills to be able to do the job you are hired for. Thinking about what concrete skills you have and making those specifics clear can really help you when looking for a job and it is definitely something I will be thinking about as I enter the workforce.

I also found it interesting when the author wrote about “buzzword bingo”. If you do a quick search for software development jobs, you do see a lot of these buzzwords and that can sometimes be really intimidating. Having ultra-high standards for software developers in kind of a meme now too (10+ years of experience in Swift required!!!). Making a list of these concrete skills helps make that a little less intimidating as you realize how capable you really are. That or it can help you see how far you need to go. Taking stock of your abilities is a good thing.

I know I am lacking a bit in the concrete skill area. A lot of the work we are doing with the project this semester will help fix that deficiency. We are working with so many new tools and I feel like I am learning more about software development than ever before. Putting myself in the uncomfortable position of creating something complex using brand new languages and technologies is pushing me towards becoming a better programmer.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Half-Cooked Coding by alexmle1999 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns Blog – Nurture Your Passion

For this week’s blog post, I read the section  “Nurture Your Passion ” from chapter two of the book Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The section talked about how the work environment can stifle the passion for the craft. For example, you might be a software developer with a passion for the craft, but unfortunately the daily activities, “demoralizing corporate hierarchies, project death marches, abusive managers, or cynical colleagues.” Can become hard for your passion to grow by staying in such hostile conditions. I think this is true for the majority of the people that work in the IT field. I have seen especially my family members whose having such a hostile situation at work especially when there is a deadline that is approaching, or a software release is going on.

The author goes further into project death marches in which he explained how they are the most damaging of the hostile situations, it takes your time and energy, preventing you from taking any significant actions to protect your passion as more important issues like physical and mental health can take a toll. Now that I think about it, work pressure and stress can significantly affect one’s mental health.  I think it is important for people to take a break from sometimes and focus on something else for a little time. Identify what u like, find something at work that interests you and you enjoy doing. I liked the solution that was given to this problem which was: to grow your passion, set clear boundaries that define the sort of environment you are willing to work in. I think that creating some sort of boundaries helps and necessary to have a free hostile environment. One of the statements I do not agree with the author is how walking out of a meeting or refuse to distribute code that doesn’t meet your minimum standards will help your passion however this type of behavior can cause a conflict between your colleagues or your boss. I think the best solution if you want to follow your passion is just to do it, nurture your passion or find a job that suits well for your passion.   

From the blog Derin's CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

From C to Shining Sea

The Snake

As of recently, I’ve been spending most of my personal coding time in Python. I enjoy a lot of languages and Python certainly isn’t for everything, but when you can use Python, boy is it a joy. As someone who strictly indents in any language, I love the indentation style of denoting blocks. Curly braces have their use, but the vast majority of the time, they’re purely redundant. The same goes for semicolons. I completely agree with the movement of programming languages towards spoken language. The main downfall of Python, comes from how high-level of a language it is.

Being a high-level language allows for it to be as convenient to write in as it is, however you are completely unable to use low level features. It also means Python’s performance is often much lower than that of C++ or other languages. Of course, everyone says that each language has its own use and Python isn’t meant for performance-intensive programs. But why not? Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a single modular language that had Python-like simple syntax with the features of JS, Python, C++, etc.

The Sea

Before I take on the task of creating such a language, I want to start smaller. Introducing Sea- It’s C, just written differently. I am currently working on a language called Sea which is effectively C, but with Python-like syntax. I say Python-like because much of the syntax of Python relies on internal data types. My goal is to keep Sea true to C. That is, no increase performance penalty; all of the penalty should be paid at compile time. That’s phase one. Start off with a more concise face for C. Then, I want to create libraries for Sea that take it one step further – introducing data types and functions innate to Python like range, enumerate, tuples, etc. Lastly, I want to use the knowledge I’ve gained to create the language to end all languages as described above.

I’m starting off with a Sea-to-C Transpiler, which is available on Github. In its present state, I am able to transpile a few block declarations and statements. I’m currently working on a data structure for representing and parsing statements. Once that’s made, I can add them one by one. The final result should look something like this:

include <stdio.h>
include "my_header.hea"

define ten as 10
define twelve as 12

void func():
    pass

int main():
    if ten is defined and twelve is defined as 12:
        undefine twelve
        // Why not

    c block:
        // Idk how to do this in Sea so I'll just use C
        printf("Interesting");

    do:
        char *language = "Python"

        print(f"This is an f-string like in {language}")

        for letter in language:
            pass

        break if size(language) == 1
    while true and ten == 11

    return 0

Once the transpiler is done, I want to create an actual compiler. I’ll also want to make a C-to-Sea transpiler eventually as well. I’ll also want to create syntax highlighting for VS Code, a linter, etc. It has come a surprisingly long way in such a short while, and I’ve learned so much Python because of it. I’m also learning a good amount about C. I’m hoping once I create this, there will never be any reason to use C over Sea. There are reasons why certain languages aren’t used in certain scenarios. However, I see no reason why certain syntaxes are limited in the same way. Making indentation a part of the language forces developers to write more readable code while removing characters to type. Languages should be made more simple, without compromising on functionality. That is my goal.

From the blog CS@Worcester – The Introspective Thinker by David MacDonald and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Your First Language: How it Affects Everything Else

The Your First Language pattern, discussed in chapter 2 of Apprenticeship Patterns, concerns the idea of someone picking their first programming language, how they should choose it, what they should do with it once they become proficient, and how it might affect future efforts to learn other languages. I thought that this aspect in particular was very relevant to my own experiences. I first started learning to program in Java, and as a result I find that I tend to look at things in relation to how they might work in Java rather than from the perspective of whatever language I might be working in.

Regarding the text, Apprenticeship Patterns discusses the idea in terms of how it might play into someone’s career over time. If you learn one language first, and put a majority of your development time into that language, then it makes sense that this would impact your views and understanding of other languages. Various techniques are offered in terms of actually learning the language, including building of toy programs (similar to those discussed in the breakable toys pattern), learning through testing frameworks (implementing test cases and using them to understand how the language works), or finding mentors who are already experienced in the language to provide guidance and advice.

In terms of how this is relevant to myself, I certainly feel that starting with an object oriented language has made me more predisposed to prefer this style of programming over others. This can at times make me feel out-of-depth when working with other styles of programming language (functional, scripting, procedural) as object oriented programming is the most familiar to me. The authors of Apprenticeship Patterns recommend trying to learn as many different style of programming language as possible to avoid getting “stuck” in one language.

Going outside of the “comfort zone” so to speak, is a good way to broaden your range of experience relative to any topic in a general sense. In terms of using this approach myself, I would likely first start by taking a smaller step away from more familiar Java-similar languages (python, ruby etc) before moving on to something completely dissimilar to Java (F#, Lua, R etc). This would help broaden my area of knowledge and allow for a greater range of potential solutions when developing software.

Text referenced:

https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/Apprenticeship+Patterns/9780596806842/ch02.html#your_first_language

From the blog CS@Worcester – CodeRoad by toomeymatt1515 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns Blog Post #6

With the semester nearing its end, I do not have many more apprenticeship patterns to review on here. Because of this, I am trying to choose patterns that have the most relatability to me. For that reason, I chose to review the pattern in the book entitled Sustainable Motivations. It is all about developing your technical skills in order to maintain your ability to work well given different project goals and situations. The problem that I am trying to solve by learning this skill/pattern is the fact that this line of job is often rigorous, difficult, and stressful. I need to learn to love what I do and be good at what I do when I am not loving it. The book explains how there are many days, weeks, and months where my job will be extremely fun and enjoyable, but that there are also many times when it will be quite the opposite. The important thing is for me to keep moving and working through the not-so-good times and continue to stay motivated as much as I can throughout the process. The book has some great tips and examples of how to stay motivated during the harder times. First, I should be working hard to move up in the ladder of my jobs rather than just fulfilling my personal duties. This is especially apparent when I am not enjoying what I am working on and mainly working for the money aspect. The second example is when I could possibly want to quit and I decide to pull through and finish what I am working on. It proves valuable and exciting to finish things whether you liked the process or not. Lastly, the book shows that pulling through the tough and hard times will help your reputation as a worker and a programmer immensely and that in doing so, more opportunities with open up. This whole pattern resonates with me so much because of how ominous real life jobs feel to me at the moment. I know that if I follow those three examples/tips, I will not regret it! Bad times will happen, and pulling through will only help me grow.

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

Retreat into Competence

            The learning pattern “Retreat into Competence” from the Apprenticeship Patterns book is something that gave me great comfort to read. The idea is that, when overwhelmed by your ignorance in the face of a complex problem or task, it can be beneficial to temporarily fall back onto what you know. This can boost your confidence, refresh your mind, and/or reveal relevant applications of the knowledge you do have. All of these things can make tackling your ignorance easier, or at least a little more manageable.

            As the book points out time and time again, it is very beneficial to accept what you don’t know and face it head on, but sometimes this can leave you stranded. There are many times that learning new concepts can feel like reading a different language or can make my eyes glaze over for 10 minutes before I realize that I haven’t been paying attention and need to start again. In times like these, I believe this learning pattern is very beneficial.

            For example, in the current course, I needed to learn Vue.js for the project. It’s a pretty straightforward task, but doing it was not very easy. I still wouldn’t call myself comfortable with Vue.js, but I definitely made some substantial progress in the face of feeling totally overwhelmed. When there were times that I didn’t know how to approach the sub-problems of learning that I faced, I found it supremely useful to take time off and look at other parts of the project which I felt more comfortable with. I retreated to things like looking over the backend API endpoints and practicing them a little bit before returning to Vue.js. These breaks allowed my mind to refresh as I could read over materials again with a better understanding and then practice the problems I was facing.

            I think the main difference in what I was doing was that I did not set blocks of time for my retreats into competence. When I returned to my real work, I sure felt more confident and had less of a sense of imposter syndrome, but sometimes these breaks were too long and help me back from real progress. I think measuring some finite time will help greatly in picking myself back up without being a hinderance to progress. There are plenty of times I know I will become lost in the capstone, as well as down the road in every project I work on, so I predict this learning pattern will be a very helpful tool.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Marcos Felipe&#039;s CS Blog by mfelipe98 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Why use Docker?

 This week on my CS Journey, I want to talk about Docker. I know we went over several different activities in class; however, I was still a little confused, so I decided to look more into detail from outside sources to understand the concept and terms well. Docker is a tool designed to make it easier to create, deploy, and run applications by using containers. A container is not so much different than a Virtual Machine But, instead of creating a full operating system, a Docker Container has just the minimum set of operating system software needed for the application to run and rely on the host Linux Kernel itself.

The first blog talked about the importance of docker and how to step a docker file in the root directory. There was a 12-minute video from YouTube that explained the concept very well. I learned a lot from that YouTube video. The blog also talked about creating a docker-compose file which is a tool that allows you to deploy and manage multiple containers at the same time. I learned the concepts that go inside a file including, From where to take a Docker file to build a particular image, Which ports you want to expose, How to link containers, Which ports you want to bind to the host machine, and other key commands. This blog was very helpful to do assignment 4 building the Nginx and the MongoDB servers.  

The next blog talked about the benefit of docker, one of the major benefits of containers is portability. Containers can run on top of virtual machines, or in the cloud. This has made it easier to use cases of containers to be around software development. People now can write applications, place it in a container, and then the application can be moved across various environments, as it is encapsulated inside the container which I think is helpful in the environment. It was quite interesting to learn that Docker offers privately hosted repositories of containers, which are about $1 per container. Many tech companies are looking to get into the action of using docker at their place especially the cloud hosting companies.

It was interesting to learn about the concepts of Docker, how to use the commands properly and how major companies are using docker at their workplace, Overall, the blogs and the video helped me to understand the tools behind docker especially running your image from localhost to port and other interesting concepts. I highly recommend everyone check out the video it is well explained.

Source1: https://medium.com/@reyhanhamidi/why-bother-use-docker-61eadf968d87 

Source2: https://www.networkworld.com/article/2361465/docker-101-what-it-is-and-why-it-s-important.html

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFl2mCHdv24

From the blog Derin&#039;s CS Journey by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Docker Review

 

Today I want to explain some information from what I learned in the class and some sources outside.
What is Docker?
Docker is a package of Linux containers, providing a simple and easy to use container interface. It is by far the most popular Linux container solution. It is a kind of visual machine but it also has differences from the visual machine.
Docker packages the application and its dependencies in a single file. Running this file generates a virtual container. The program runs in this virtual container as if it were running on a real physical machine. With Docker, you don’t have to worry about the environment.
Generally speaking, Docker’s interface is quite simple. Users can easily create and use containers and put their own applications into the containers. Containers can also be versioned, copied, Shared, and modified just like normal code.
The main USES of Docker currently fall into three categories. First, provide a disposable environment. Examples include testing other people’s software locally and providing a unit test and build an environment for continuous integration. Second, provide flexible cloud services. Because Docker containers can be opened and closed on demand, they are ideal for dynamic dilatation and shrinkage. Third, establish micro-service architecture. With multiple containers, a machine can run multiple services, so the microservice architecture can be simulated on its own.
Docker mainly contains three basic concepts, namely image, container, and warehouse. Once you understand these three concepts, you can understand the entire life cycle of Docker. The following is a brief summary of these three points that we have a short view of the class.
Docker image is a special file system that not only provides the programs, libraries, resources, configuration files required by the container runtime but also contains some configuration parameters for the runtime. 
The essence of containers is processed, but unlike processes that execute directly on the host, container processes that run in their own separate namespace containers can be. Create, start, stop, delete, pause, and so on, the relationship between an image and a container is analogous to classes and instances in object-oriented programming.
Once the image is built, it is easy to run on the current host, but if you need to use the image on other servers, you need a centralized service to store and distribute the image, and Docker Registry is one such service. A Docker Registry can contain multiple repositories; Each warehouse can contain multiple tags; Each label corresponds to an image, where the label can be understood as the version number of the image.
On the whole, Docker is a concept that is more and more interesting, which is worth our in-depth understanding. 
Sources:
https://medium.com/codingthesmartway-com-blog/docker-beginners-guide-part-1-images-containers-6f3507fffc98
https://docs.docker.com/get-started/part2/

From the blog haorusong by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Adding Comments to Code

This post is about Chapter 4. Comments from the book, Clean Code by Robert Martin. This chapter along with the rest of this book has a strong relationship with the course because it is all about how to write clean organized code. This chapter is on writing effective comments. Rather than long drawn out chapters of plain text, the chapter is split up into many subheadings with even more sub-subheadings. I find this format very useful because it splits up and organizes the information so that it is easier to read and understand. Many of the subtopics have many examples to go with them. This makes it even easier to understand what they are trying to say. The chapter is split up into into two main sections/subheadings, “Good Comments” and “Bad Comments”. Each have many subheadings to them such as “Legal Comments”, “Explanation of Intent” , and “Informative Comments” under the “Good Comments” subheading. “Redundant Comments”, “Misleading Comments”, and “Mandated Comments” under the “Bad Comments” subheading. I selected this article because we have not gone over proper comment writing in my classes (or at least I have not), and I think it would be an important thing to learn for future jobs and class projects. I have found the information in the article to be very direct and informative. As said earlier, it is split up into various subheadings with subtopics so if you are debating whether to add a certain comment into your code, you can go right to topic of the exact type of comment you are looking to add. I have learned about “noise comments” which is basically putting comments that are not needed such as /** Default Constructor*/ over a constructor. I would do this because I would typically like to explain everything in the code but things such as constructors explain themselves. Another is “mandated comments” where you give a javadoc at every single function. I would always do this but it only creates clutter. An example of a “good comment” that I have learned about is “warning comments” where you can warn other programmers of certain consequences for example leaving, “// don’t run unless you have time to kill” above a test with a really big file. Another example of a “good comment” is “amplification” where a comment can be used to amplify the importance of something that may not seem that way. I will be able to apply this knowledge in the future with projects and work to provide clean uncluttered code and powerful, efficient comments.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Austins CS Site by Austin Engel and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

JavaScript

In Past class session we are learning a lot about docker. Not just docker but also how it work with Java & JavaScript. Today I am going to introduce JavaScript and how it work in docker. So let’s start what’s different between Java and Java script. So Java applications are run in a virtual machine or web browser while JavaScript is run on a web browser. Java code is compiled whereas while JavaScript code is in text and in a web page. JavaScript is an OOP scripting language, whereas Java is an OOP programming language.

Do not confuse JavaScript with the java programming language . Both “Java” and “JavaScript” are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle in the U.S. and others countries. However, the two programming languages have a very different syntax, semantic, and use.

JavaScript (JS) is a lightweight, interpreted, or just-in-time compiled programming language with first-class function While it is most well-known as the scripting language for Web pages, many non-browser environments also use it, such as Node.js, Apache and Adobe. JavaScript is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm, single-threaded, dynamic language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and declarative (e.g. functional programming) styles. The Docker  platform allows developers to package and run applications as containers. A container is an isolated process that runs on a shared operating system, offering a lighter weight alternative to virtual machines. Though containers are not new, they offer benefits — including process isolation and environment standardization — that are growing in importance as more developers use distributed application architectures.

  • JavaScript is used in Web Application Development. Some of the examples are -NetFlix, Facebook, Uber, LinkedIn etc.
  • JavaScript is used in Mobile Application Development. Some of the examples are- Spotify, Instagram, Facebook, Skype, Uber etc.
  • JavaScript is used in Game Development. Let’s see some games where JavaScript is used- Angry birds, Candy Crush ,Systems Offline, Re-wire, Offline Paradise etc.

Runnig JS code in browser: A good way to learn JavaScript is to run it in browser’s JavaScript console. Just open your favorite browser and press F12 key or Ctrl + Shift + I on your keyboard.You will see something like this on the screen now click on the console tab which I marked. And thats your plaground, yes you heard me correct you can write javascript code here. Lets write our legendary program here and see.You will see something like this on the screen now click on the console tab which I marked. And thats your plaground, yes you heard me correct you can write javascript code here. Lets write our legendary program here and see.

here is link to instruction on How To Build a Node.is Application with Docker.

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-build-a-node-js-application-with-docker

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/javascript-the-definitive/9781491952016/ch01.html

From the blog CS@Worcester – &lt;/electrons&gt; by 3electrones and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.