Category Archives: Week 8

Week 8: The Long Road

For this week’s pattern, I decided to read ‘The Long Road’ from Chapter 3: Walking the Long Road. The context of this pattern is that today’s society values quick success and overnight celebrities more than long term goals and success. Due to this, software developers are much different compared to veteran software developers and make the same mistakes they had made when they were inexperienced software developers. The problem of this pattern is that I, the reader, aspire to be a master software craftsman but my aspiration conflicts with what people expect from me, quick success. My guts tell me to take the highest paying job and first promotion I’m given and ignore slowly building up my skills. I thought this was pretty spot on of how society is today. Social media makes it so anyone can become an overnight celebrity which is probably one of the root causes as to why society is this way. Too much do we value quick cash and success, some people even expect it which is weird considering how hard it is to become an overnight celebrity. People need to take a step back and learn to have a long term goal and work towards your success instead of trying to get rich quick.

As for the solution of this pattern, it was basically the same as I wrote above. I should accept that I may be considered weird for thinking long term but I should accept it. I should also keep focusing on my long term goal, which is to become a software craftsman. By following the long term goal of a software craftsman, I’m able to become more skilled at learning, problem solving, and developing strong relationships with my customers. This is a good thing because, as mentioned before, people are too focused on getting rich quick and not focusing on building themselves up. By sticking to this, I won’t get rich quick like some of these people but I will be much more experienced, having built myself up long term and sticking to a goal. This is a long journey I’m not ready for but this will help me much more later in my life.

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

Practice, practice, practice

The people we know as masters don’t devote themselves to their particular skill just to get better at it. The truth is, they love to practice—and because of this they do get better. And then to complete the circle, the better they get the more they enjoy performing the basic moves over and over again.

—George Leonard, Mastery

The pattern I will be talking about in this blog post from the Apprenticeship Patterns book is the “Practice, practice, practice” pattern. What we can understand from the title of this pattern, is that practice is the solution to learning things in general and is the only way that can make things easier.

As George Leonard has described in this pattern, based on context to develop concrete skills in new areas, we will try our best to get better at the things we do. I totally agree with this context of trying to develop our skills. We always need to practice new things and not only the thing we have known better. It won’t help us for sure.

There is an expression in English that says: practice makes perfect. This expression is used for encouraging someone to continue to do something many times, in a way that the person will learn to do it really well. Specifically, this phrase means that if we practice something enough, eventually we will be able to do it perfectly. But George doesn’t agree at this point. He thinks that in fact, practice makes permanent. The only reason he says that, is because we need to choose the right thing to practice every day. And this thing, according to him, is the most important skill than repeating practice. I totally agree with him at this point. When it comes to practice, we have to know what we are doing and learn it in a perfect way. And then we need to try a new exercise to solve and then practice it. In this way, we can learn new things and at the same time, we can be able to solve whatever problem we might face.

That said, when I first started to work on programming I needed some time to fit in and learn new things. It was some hard and at the same time, it was slow and something that looked so difficult to be comfortable with.  But the good thing was that my school was a post-secondary and was based on practice. I did two years in a rowing practice and then we had a theory part. This was really helpful for us as new programmers. By practice, we learned a lot. And here I am after some years, practicing again for new programs and learning every day a new thing that can be useful in the future.

From the blog CS@worcester – Xhulja's Blogs by xmurati and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Patterns – Nurture Your Passion

For this blog post, I have chosen the “Nurture Your Passion” pattern in which this pattern talks about how one should keep their passion for whatever they are doing secure from the inevitable draining activities that will harm your passion. When one progresses into their career, the circumstances will change and the activities you used to do for enjoyment will soon turn annoyances or be in such a crunch that there is no time for blank. It is up to yourself to mitigate these issues and to help preserve your passion.

The time of coding and working with all these programs and getting a fully functioning product is quite fulfilling to see. The work needed to get there and the problems that life will throw at your way will make you want to reconsider your decisions however such as trying to sift through countless bugs or being in a less than optimal working environment. There a number of different options to consider when trying to mitigate this issue, such as exploring different forms of media that contain information that you would like to look at or interacting with different people with the same passion to help bolster your own. The book goes into different patterns that describe these solutions such as breakable toys and kindred spirits where you have these different resources to use to help keep you going.

This pattern does indeed resonate with me as while coding has started out as a side hobby, quick and enjoyable with no commitments to it whatsoever is slowly changing to me more intensive and time consuming leading to generally less enjoyment. This makes me think of the eventual future of potential crunch times and unenjoyable meeting that will take place in which I will have to start picking up new skills to help mitigate these issues such as improving my communication skills incase any situations such as bad interactions with other people in the workplace could be solved by talking myself out of it. There is the chance of a new hot idea in the future that I could latch onto to help keep my interest up and going.

From the blog CS@Worcester – kbcoding by kennybui986 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Pattern: The Deep End

This week I decided to take a look at ‘The Deep End’ pattern, which covers the next step on your knowledge gaining journey. The main message of this pattern is to not be afraid and take that next big leap, whatever it may be. The pattern certainly doesn’t suggest taking a risk that jeopardizes your career, but rather taking on new challenges. Software apprentices can apply this pattern to scenarios such as taking on bigger projects, more complex tasks, working with larger teams, or in new places. While these opportunities may seem daunting, learning is all about stepping out of your comfort zone, even if it means failing at times. 

I am surprised that the pattern suggests diving straight into the deep end as opposed to starting shallow and gradually growing deeper. But I suppose if you were doing the same type of work day in and day out, your biggest break would come from a new challenge. Looking forward, when such an opportunity arises, I think the best way to face a new challenge would be to go into it prepared. This is certainly easier said than done. There is of course the mental hurdle of overcoming the fear of failure and the risk of actual failure. But again, as mentioned in this and previous patterns, you should be able to reach out to mentors and kindred spirits to help. I think that is one thing I should keep trying to recognize, that I should not be afraid to take on difficult projects if I know there is a network of people that can help guide me. 

This pattern is a good reminder to step outside of your comfort zone and it reassures you that it is okay to take risks in your professional career. Given that you have the preparation and a supportive work environment, taking on challenges will only help you gain more experience. I would think that currently, I am in the middle of one of these challenges. Up until now, I have only worked on smaller-scale projects with at most two other people. And for this capstone course, I am working with a team of 6, attempting to develop a fully functional inventory system from backend to frontend. So through this process, I have only been gaining experience and I look forward to what else I can learn.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Null Pointer by vrotimmy and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Study The Classics

This apprenticeship pattern discusses how software developers should read classic books regarding the craft of software development. Being an apprentice means that you are inexperienced and are still learning what means to be a successful software developer. You should expose your ignorance and ask about any concepts that seem unknown to you, and then try to find the books where these concepts came from. An apprentice should have a list of these books on their reading list.

However, you cannot read every book. There is just way too many and there is too little time. So instead of reading every book, you should invest your time reading the good books. The good books are ones that are useful regardless of time. If you find yourself asking if a book is outdated, then you are reading the wrong type of book. Good books hold timeless information and concepts. Being able to determine which book is good and which book is not a skill that you will be able to pick over time. By reading constantly and reflecting on your work, you will be able to distinguish the “long lived” books.

While reading the good books is certainly beneficial, there is such a thing as taking things too far. If you focus too much on the classics, you might end up abandoning or forgetting pragmatic knowledge and information. This is the knowledge and information that enables software developers to improve on their day to day craftsmanship. Therefore, it is important to strike a balance in your reading list between the classic “long lived” books with modern, pragmatic books.

I personally think reading the classics is one of the most important things that an apprentice can do. An apprentice’s job is to learn as many skills, techniques, and concepts as they can about their trade. As apprentices, our inexperience and ignorance means that we still lack core concepts and skills. Reading classic books could help us attain such concepts and skills. It is from these classic books that we can expand our list of concrete skills and build a foundation for our craft.

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

Learn How You Fail

The context of this pattern is that you cannot avoid failure. If you never failed, then that means you either avoided pushing at the boundaries of your abilities or has learned to overlook your own mistakes. The problem is that even though your learning skills have improved, your failures and weakness still remains the same. The solution is as follows, seek to identify the way in which you tend to fail and try to resolve them. Accept that there will be some things that you are not good at, or that would require a disproportionate investment of time and effort in order to make a small improvement.

Now for the action part, this is what I liked the most about the pattern. In the programming language of your choice, use a simple text editor to write an implementation of binary search in one sitting. Do not compile or run it. Write all the tests that you think are needed to verify your code you just implemented. Now, go back and re-read your code and find all the errors you think you made, keep doing that until you are satisfied with the code. Make sure you give in your 100% knowledge to it. Then, finally, try to compile and run it. Before you fix all the errors, look over them and try to understand how you could have avoided such error in the first place.

For me, this pattern was really helpful. I wish I had known about this pattern when I was taking a data structure and algorithm analysis class because I really had rough in those classes. I should have done this action part for all the topics in those classes. Such as, post order tree or pre-order tree from data structures or Dijkstra’s algorithm and divide and conquer from algorithm analysis class. I have been bad at so many stuffs now that if I do something wrong, it does not even faze me anymore. But one thing I did that I’m proud of is that, whatever I failed at doing, at the end I made sure I know how to do it the correct way. What I need to work on is to practice by implementing code in a simple text editor without any error warnings.

From the blog cs@worcester – Dream to Reality by tamusandesh99 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Apprenticeship Pattern “A Different Road”

For this week’s post, I wanted to look at a topic that I see myself coming back to at a later date, which is the topic of walking away from software development. This may happen after their first job or 50 years down the line when they are a senior programmer. Regardless, the point is this can happen at any time during a person’s career. In this section, the author talks about some of the reasons why a person may suddenly have a change of heart about the field. Some of the reasons listed were that person may have found something else that had piqued their interest, or they found they did not enjoy the field as much as they initially thought. Another aspect that I noticed about this section was that the author really emphasized the importance of being open-minded and supportive of their colleagues. A person may leave the field now, but that does not mean they will be gone forever. In addition, the author also talks about how companies might not look at that person kindly because they left the field and may not be as forthcoming as they should be when/if that person returns. But as fellow programmers, the author implores us to welcome that person back with open arms and encourage them to try to do something different with their lives.

I found this section to be interesting to read because I have always viewed myself as a jack-of-all trades. I have always had many interests and that is why I took so many different classes not pertaining to my major in college. I wanted to explore as much as I could before I graduated because I have always thought of myself as the kind of people who would have many different careers over the course of my lifetime. This section really made me think because I knew I wanted to change careers at some point, but I did not put a lot of thought about what I wanted to do after I changed careers or what career I wanted to pursue after being a software developer. I think part of the reason why I did not give this topic a lot of thought is because I don’t really know when I might want to change careers or when I might get tired of programming.

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 Pattern: Familiar Tools

The pattern I decided to read is titled “Familiar Tools” from chapter 6 of Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. The problem that this pattern presents asks the reader how they plan on completing a work project if there are so many new things to learn with each project (from the technical to non-technical aspects). The solution to this problem starts by informing the reader that they should have a reliable set of familiar tools to use for each project they start. However, the reading goes on to explain that readers should be weary about how they use these tools and how dependent they are on these tools. A larger message stresses the importance of how in the process of becoming a journeyman, we may need to painfully abandon some tools and learn new, better, more effective tools in their place. The text ends by encouraging readers to either build a toolbox they can bring to a project, or if they already have a toolbox, examine potential replacement tools.

Reading this pattern was surprisingly encouraging. I don’t think that was an intention of this reading but the reason it had this effect on me was because as someone who is in the beginning of their journey in software development, it can feel pretty intimidating to just be starting out when there are people who have been working in this field for years. And yet, that person and I may be in the process of learning some of the same things today. While the other person is likely to have much more experience in using tools than I am, it is comforting to know there are things we will be learning at the same time.

This pattern has changed the way I think about my work because it has gotten my wheels turning as to what five tools I would like to have in my toolbox and what tools I think I need to continue exploring.

Lastly, there isn’t anything significant in this pattern that I disagree with. This is another pattern I enjoyed reading.

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

“Unleash Your Enthusiasm” Apprenticeship Pattern

Summary:

This apprenticeship pattern is concerned with a new developer’s entrance in a team that is both more experienced, and relatively unenthusiastic in comparison. As a newcomer, the new developer has much to learn from the industry and from his colleagues. But with every new iteration begins a chance at change. Depending on the team, enthusiasm can benefit a team that does not have low morale, and is accepting of new perspectives.

I view this apprenticeship pattern as particularly intriguing because I am genuinely enthusiastic about working on a team with other software developers. Someone who is inexperienced in a field may focus and develop skills in things that his future peers will not require. As such, it may offer a perspective that his peers do not have, such as various coding “tricks” or knowledge that may be used as a reference. For example, a new programmer may have to program an algorithm from scratch in school, which can give him ideas about a data structure that a team may either require, or benefit from. In the field, programming a data structure isn’t as important since the language would likely offer it. 

This pattern didn’t so much cause me to change my ways of thinking as it did bolster my perspective of the field. In my experience, it is natural for someone who is good at something in a field to gradually become uninterested in said field because of a sort of coexistence. There is some mental functionality or process in every person that occurs when someone becomes used to something, such as an environment or a smell, which causes him to become somewhat apathetic. In this case, a developer that is used to the field runs a genuine risk of being used to it, and therefore, not excited from it. I personally view unenthusiasm is a strong indication of decline, and any person who becomes unenthusiastic will, all else being equal, perform poorer than his peers.

I don’t disagree with anything in this pattern. As stated earlier, I strongly agree with the role that enthusiasm plays in relation with other team members, and its potential productive results that can benefit a team.

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

Apprenticeship Patterns “Expose Your Ignorance”

This apprenticeship pattern describes to us how having the ability to identify our areas of ignorance and being able to reduce will be beneficial for us software apprentices in the future. There will be tremendous pressure on us in our future jobs to be able to work on and finish projects. They will expect us to be able to deliver software, and this is where we shouldn’t be ignorant of what we are not able to do because our lack of inexperience. This is where if we do not understand something, we should not be scared to reach out to ask questions and to learn about technologies and things that we do not understand. This itself reassures everyone of our ability to learn and by not pretending how to know how to do something, it exposes our ignorance to asking questions. What we need to understand is that as apprentices, there are many areas of our craft that we know nothing about, we can’t go around letting others believe that we know everything, but instead be able to reach out and ask questions without letting our pride get in the way.

What I’ve taken away from this is to not worry about questions because letting others think that you know how to do something and delivering something incorrect is even more of an issue. I think there is pride in being able to show others you can do things on your own without help, but being an apprentice means that you should be able to learn from others without your pride getting in the way.

This pattern has been helpful in letting me be able to understand how I am when I am given work to do in the real world. There have been instances where I have been given projects to work on at work, and I have tried to do things myself without help, this itself has led me to either taking too long on something or delivering work that I am not completely proud of. There have been other instances where I am completely unable to understand some things and asking others who understand it completely really helped elevate my understanding and learning of what I want. The ability to make uncomfortable situations more comfortable for me will be me exposing my ignorance.        

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.