Category Archives: Week 9

Reflection on the Unleash Your Enthusiasm Apprenticeship Pattern

This apprenticeship pattern really tries to tell apprentices, relatively new software craftsmen, to allow their enthusiasm and new set of eyes to help guide older, more experienced members of a group. It encourages us to speak our minds about issues, and offer new solutions that may be looked over by the more experienced members of a development team, but that we can see with fresh eyes. It’s mostly about the value that new developers can bring to a project, and how at this point in our career we can gain a lot from suggesting things, whether they’re accepted or shot down, we will still learn something from the experience, and really there’s nothing to lose.

The thing that I found most surprising about this pattern was that new members of the team are actually pretty important, they cited a study about aircraft carrier teams being more effective with new members, and stated that it is similar in the software field. The new members bring in new ideas and a freshness that the more experienced group members have lost, and that it all creates an important balance between experience and freshness. It is important in the early part of our careers that we harness the new, fresh, outlook on the field in order to bring more creativity to our projects, find new ways of doing things, and are given the opportunity to advance and learn from people that have been around for a long time. And then we will eventually get to be the ones to temper the new apprentices’ expectations, and teach them, but also learn from their ideas. It is just fascinating to think that we are part of this ecosystem that has lasted for generations of developers and that despite our relative inexperience we are still invaluable assets.

I know that after reading this, I am feeling a lot less nervous about graduating in the next few months and that my contributions to my future development team will be necessary for their survival, and I’m excited to learn what I can from them. However, I’m not sure how the “Solution” part of this pattern really addresses the core tenant of the pattern. Yes, it is a good idea to make sure that your voice is heard and have a more experienced person tell you if there are flaws in your idea and where to improve. However, for many of us, we’ve never really been in a professional environment so it is kind of hard to achieve their solution. However, I don’t think there is a real issue or something I disagree with, but it just seems like it isn’t fully attainable for everyone.

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

Breakable Toys

There are many critical systems that have no room for failures, such as banking software or a hospital’s patient management system. It is difficult to experiment with new features or try a new approach when a piece of software is heavily relied upon. In order to experiment with new things, you need to have a test environment where you can try out features. If these features turn out to be harmful or cause problems down the line, they will not affect the current user version of the software. Creating a playground environment allows you to not worry about breaking changes or failures cousin headaches for program users and other developers. Software that is a breakable toy means it is that something can be played with, broken, and replaced without impacting anyone else. It is a way to learn, test new workflows, and ideas.

It is hard to clone and play around with code when there is a complex system that requires a database, client, server, and other resources for its operation. Because of the work and resources to create a clone of an existing system, I would not have created a second replica of the system in the past. However, this pattern makes a strong enough argument for me to put in the effort to make a breakable system for testing. I thought it was interesting a breakable toy can also be a personal project where you are the only one who uses it. I thought of this almost like a programmer’s diary where you program your ideas in private and you are the only one who sees them.

I currently program with a pattern similar to breakable toys but on a smaller scale. When I want to add a new feature into a codebase, I make a testing branch where I can execute that idea. In my ‘toy’ branches, I do not have any intention of merging the code into the main branch, I only use it to play around with an idea to see how it might be executed. I do not disagree with any aspect of this pattern, although it is good to also be comfortable working in an environment where you have to be careful about the programming you do could have a major effect.

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

Be the worst

Be the lion’s tail rather than the fox’s head!

Tractate Avot

I found this pattern interesting, but at the same time, a pattern that has a lot of space to describe from different perspectives. “Be the worst” is the title that when you see it at the first glance doesn’t sound really good. It grabs your attention, and also sounds like a piece of advice.

In every work environment, there are employees who are not at the same level of knowledge. Someone is good at factual and theoretical knowledge, someone is good at accessing and applying information, another one is good at coding, someone in communications skills, and someone in the way of organizing the work. A company might have also a person that is capable of doing all of these, but also it might have people that can’t do any of them.

There is an expression of Mahatma Gandhi. It says: “Practice as you are the worst, perform as if you are the best!”  This quote looks the same as the pattern that Tractate Avot talks about. Even if you are the worst on the team, you still need to practice and learn from the best ones. But at the same time, whatever you learn, you have to share and perform as the best thing you can do.

The solution that the author gives here, is to be surrounded by developers who are better than you. Based on him, also the solution is finding a stronger team where we can be the weakest member. Okay, when I read in this context it looks like advice that I can learn from. But at the same time looks a little challenging to me. Being in an environment where you are the worst of all the employees, firstly could make you feel as inferior. You might feel uncomfortable in a place where you know less than anyone. I think that nowadays anyone has the possibility to be informed about something is not sure about. Nowadays everything is well explained through information, tutorial videos where anyone can learn something new or when you are not really sure how something works. In this way, it might not be necessary to feel like someone that is just “the worst”. Of course, we can look for help when we are not sure about something or for learning something new and unseen before. But I don’t agree with being the worst.

To sum up, the point where I totally agree with Tractat Avot is when he says that one thing that can help us maintain a more accurate self-assessment, will be collaborating with great developers. Only in that way, we can have a successful software project on our teams.

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

Use the Source

The pattern I am writing about today is use the source. The problem is that an apprentice can be using bad habits, but he will not know if he is not reading someone else’s code. The author specifically mentions that the apprentice should look at the source code of the tools he is using. One reaction I had to this was an interview experience I had. I solved a coding problem, and my interviewer asked my what the time complexity was. I was using the Java library method Arrays.sort() but I did not look up what the time complexity of that library method. I eventually figured it out. But it made me realize that I should know more about the libraries that I am using in my code.

The author also mentions the importance of refactory code. When reading somebody elses codebase. The craftsmen should look for ways to improce the codebase, and understand why the project is built in the way that it was. This experience could also lead to apprentice refactoring his own code. The author also mentions code reviews. This is something I am really looking forward to as a professional Software Engineer. When we learn the fundamentals school, we are usually working alone, or in a small group. But in the professional world, we collaborate. This will give myself, as an apprentice an oppurtunity to learn from the source code of my coworkers. Open source is another great way for new craftsmen to gain this experience.

The author recommends that the apprentice contribute to open source, so he can read source code, and learn from it. He also mentions that if a programmer can understand a program from the source code, that means he is a good craftsmen. This makes a lot of sense to me, and understandy the code base is typically what a programmer does on their first day or days on the job. In order to contribute to a project of any size, the craftmen should know what the code currently does. So I agree that using the source is an incredibly important skill.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Jim Spisto by jspisto and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

SOLID Principles

Hello and welcome back to another week of my blog! This week I want to talk about SOLID design principles since it is important for other programmers to read and understand your code so you can collaboratively work together on it. Having code that is not clean and hard to understand will ultimately hinder you in the long term. Having clean code also makes your code easier to write and understand as well. The term SOLID stands for multiple things: The Single Responsibility Principle, The Open-Closed Principle, The Liskov Substitution Principle, The Interface Segregation Principle, and The Dependency Inversion Principle. These principles were made by a Computer Scientist named Robert J. Martin who is also the author of Clean Code. I’m reading that book for CS-348. 

Starting with the Single Responsibility Principle, this principle states that a class should only have one responsibility. Furthermore, it should only have one reason to change. For example, there is a program that calculates the area of shapes. There would be classes that define the shapes themselves (ex. Class Square) and a class that calculates the area of the shapes (ex. Class ShapeArea). The ShapeArea class should only calculate the area of the shapes. 

The open closed principle means that classes should be open for extension and closed to modification. This means that programmers should be able to add new features to the code without touching the existing code because touching the existing code could create new bugs. 

The Liskov substitution Principle states that subclasses should be substitutable for their base classes. This means that if class B is a subclass of class A, we should be able to pass an object of class B to any method that expects an object of class A and the method should not give any weird output in that case. 

The interface segregation principle states that larger interfaces should be split into smaller ones. By doing that, we can ensure that implementing classes only need to be concerned about the methods that are of interest to them. 

The last one is the Dependency Inversion principle. The general idea of the principle is that high level and complex modules should be easily reusable and unaffected by changes in low level utility modules. To do this, there needs to be an abstraction between the high level and low level modules so they are separated and you can tell them apart. 

Those are all the SOLID principles. Thank you for reading this blog post!

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/solid-design-principles/#

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

SOLID Principles

Hello and welcome back to another week of my blog! This week I want to talk about SOLID design principles since it is important for other programmers to read and understand your code so you can collaboratively work together on it. Having code that is not clean and hard to understand will ultimately hinder you in the long term. Having clean code also makes your code easier to write and understand as well. The term SOLID stands for multiple things: The Single Responsibility Principle, The Open-Closed Principle, The Liskov Substitution Principle, The Interface Segregation Principle, and The Dependency Inversion Principle. These principles were made by a Computer Scientist named Robert J. Martin who is also the author of Clean Code. I’m reading that book for CS-348. 

Starting with the Single Responsibility Principle, this principle states that a class should only have one responsibility. Furthermore, it should only have one reason to change. For example, there is a program that calculates the area of shapes. There would be classes that define the shapes themselves (ex. Class Square) and a class that calculates the area of the shapes (ex. Class ShapeArea). The ShapeArea class should only calculate the area of the shapes. 

The open closed principle means that classes should be open for extension and closed to modification. This means that programmers should be able to add new features to the code without touching the existing code because touching the existing code could create new bugs. 

The Liskov substitution Principle states that subclasses should be substitutable for their base classes. This means that if class B is a subclass of class A, we should be able to pass an object of class B to any method that expects an object of class A and the method should not give any weird output in that case. 

The interface segregation principle states that larger interfaces should be split into smaller ones. By doing that, we can ensure that implementing classes only need to be concerned about the methods that are of interest to them. 

The last one is the Dependency Inversion principle. The general idea of the principle is that high level and complex modules should be easily reusable and unaffected by changes in low level utility modules. To do this, there needs to be an abstraction between the high level and low level modules so they are separated and you can tell them apart. 

Those are all the SOLID principles. Thank you for reading this blog post!

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/solid-design-principles/#

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

SOLID Principles

Hello and welcome back to another week of my blog! This week I want to talk about SOLID design principles since it is important for other programmers to read and understand your code so you can collaboratively work together on it. Having code that is not clean and hard to understand will ultimately hinder you in the long term. Having clean code also makes your code easier to write and understand as well. The term SOLID stands for multiple things: The Single Responsibility Principle, The Open-Closed Principle, The Liskov Substitution Principle, The Interface Segregation Principle, and The Dependency Inversion Principle. These principles were made by a Computer Scientist named Robert J. Martin who is also the author of Clean Code. I’m reading that book for CS-348. 

Starting with the Single Responsibility Principle, this principle states that a class should only have one responsibility. Furthermore, it should only have one reason to change. For example, there is a program that calculates the area of shapes. There would be classes that define the shapes themselves (ex. Class Square) and a class that calculates the area of the shapes (ex. Class ShapeArea). The ShapeArea class should only calculate the area of the shapes. 

The open closed principle means that classes should be open for extension and closed to modification. This means that programmers should be able to add new features to the code without touching the existing code because touching the existing code could create new bugs. 

The Liskov substitution Principle states that subclasses should be substitutable for their base classes. This means that if class B is a subclass of class A, we should be able to pass an object of class B to any method that expects an object of class A and the method should not give any weird output in that case. 

The interface segregation principle states that larger interfaces should be split into smaller ones. By doing that, we can ensure that implementing classes only need to be concerned about the methods that are of interest to them. 

The last one is the Dependency Inversion principle. The general idea of the principle is that high level and complex modules should be easily reusable and unaffected by changes in low level utility modules. To do this, there needs to be an abstraction between the high level and low level modules so they are separated and you can tell them apart. 

Those are all the SOLID principles. Thank you for reading this blog post!

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/solid-design-principles/#

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

SOLID Principles

Hello and welcome back to another week of my blog! This week I want to talk about SOLID design principles since it is important for other programmers to read and understand your code so you can collaboratively work together on it. Having code that is not clean and hard to understand will ultimately hinder you in the long term. Having clean code also makes your code easier to write and understand as well. The term SOLID stands for multiple things: The Single Responsibility Principle, The Open-Closed Principle, The Liskov Substitution Principle, The Interface Segregation Principle, and The Dependency Inversion Principle. These principles were made by a Computer Scientist named Robert J. Martin who is also the author of Clean Code. I’m reading that book for CS-348. 

Starting with the Single Responsibility Principle, this principle states that a class should only have one responsibility. Furthermore, it should only have one reason to change. For example, there is a program that calculates the area of shapes. There would be classes that define the shapes themselves (ex. Class Square) and a class that calculates the area of the shapes (ex. Class ShapeArea). The ShapeArea class should only calculate the area of the shapes. 

The open closed principle means that classes should be open for extension and closed to modification. This means that programmers should be able to add new features to the code without touching the existing code because touching the existing code could create new bugs. 

The Liskov substitution Principle states that subclasses should be substitutable for their base classes. This means that if class B is a subclass of class A, we should be able to pass an object of class B to any method that expects an object of class A and the method should not give any weird output in that case. 

The interface segregation principle states that larger interfaces should be split into smaller ones. By doing that, we can ensure that implementing classes only need to be concerned about the methods that are of interest to them. 

The last one is the Dependency Inversion principle. The general idea of the principle is that high level and complex modules should be easily reusable and unaffected by changes in low level utility modules. To do this, there needs to be an abstraction between the high level and low level modules so they are separated and you can tell them apart. 

Those are all the SOLID principles. Thank you for reading this blog post!

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/solid-design-principles/#

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

SOLID Principles

Hello and welcome back to another week of my blog! This week I want to talk about SOLID design principles since it is important for other programmers to read and understand your code so you can collaboratively work together on it. Having code that is not clean and hard to understand will ultimately hinder you in the long term. Having clean code also makes your code easier to write and understand as well. The term SOLID stands for multiple things: The Single Responsibility Principle, The Open-Closed Principle, The Liskov Substitution Principle, The Interface Segregation Principle, and The Dependency Inversion Principle. These principles were made by a Computer Scientist named Robert J. Martin who is also the author of Clean Code. I’m reading that book for CS-348. 

Starting with the Single Responsibility Principle, this principle states that a class should only have one responsibility. Furthermore, it should only have one reason to change. For example, there is a program that calculates the area of shapes. There would be classes that define the shapes themselves (ex. Class Square) and a class that calculates the area of the shapes (ex. Class ShapeArea). The ShapeArea class should only calculate the area of the shapes. 

The open closed principle means that classes should be open for extension and closed to modification. This means that programmers should be able to add new features to the code without touching the existing code because touching the existing code could create new bugs. 

The Liskov substitution Principle states that subclasses should be substitutable for their base classes. This means that if class B is a subclass of class A, we should be able to pass an object of class B to any method that expects an object of class A and the method should not give any weird output in that case. 

The interface segregation principle states that larger interfaces should be split into smaller ones. By doing that, we can ensure that implementing classes only need to be concerned about the methods that are of interest to them. 

The last one is the Dependency Inversion principle. The general idea of the principle is that high level and complex modules should be easily reusable and unaffected by changes in low level utility modules. To do this, there needs to be an abstraction between the high level and low level modules so they are separated and you can tell them apart. 

Those are all the SOLID principles. Thank you for reading this blog post!

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/solid-design-principles/#

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

SOLID Principles

Hello and welcome back to another week of my blog! This week I want to talk about SOLID design principles since it is important for other programmers to read and understand your code so you can collaboratively work together on it. Having code that is not clean and hard to understand will ultimately hinder you in the long term. Having clean code also makes your code easier to write and understand as well. The term SOLID stands for multiple things: The Single Responsibility Principle, The Open-Closed Principle, The Liskov Substitution Principle, The Interface Segregation Principle, and The Dependency Inversion Principle. These principles were made by a Computer Scientist named Robert J. Martin who is also the author of Clean Code. I’m reading that book for CS-348. 

Starting with the Single Responsibility Principle, this principle states that a class should only have one responsibility. Furthermore, it should only have one reason to change. For example, there is a program that calculates the area of shapes. There would be classes that define the shapes themselves (ex. Class Square) and a class that calculates the area of the shapes (ex. Class ShapeArea). The ShapeArea class should only calculate the area of the shapes. 

The open closed principle means that classes should be open for extension and closed to modification. This means that programmers should be able to add new features to the code without touching the existing code because touching the existing code could create new bugs. 

The Liskov substitution Principle states that subclasses should be substitutable for their base classes. This means that if class B is a subclass of class A, we should be able to pass an object of class B to any method that expects an object of class A and the method should not give any weird output in that case. 

The interface segregation principle states that larger interfaces should be split into smaller ones. By doing that, we can ensure that implementing classes only need to be concerned about the methods that are of interest to them. 

The last one is the Dependency Inversion principle. The general idea of the principle is that high level and complex modules should be easily reusable and unaffected by changes in low level utility modules. To do this, there needs to be an abstraction between the high level and low level modules so they are separated and you can tell them apart. 

Those are all the SOLID principles. Thank you for reading this blog post!

https://www.bmc.com/blogs/solid-design-principles/#

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.