For this week, I chose to read ‘Reading List’ from Chapter 6: Construct Your Curriculum. I thought this pattern would be a good last pattern to read about now that the semester is ending. This chapter consisted of mostly patterns that are useful for post undergraduate stuff and things to reinforce in your head moving into your software career. So, for the context of this pattern, after becoming proficient in your first language (another pattern), you begin to look around and see the vast sea of info. I found this relatable as there is so many different languages in software programming and so many different technologies that accompany it as well, there is a lot to learn. However, with that in mind, I think that just makes me wanna learn about a lot of the different languages and technologies since software development is so vast.

For the problem of the pattern, you are unable to keep up with the amount of books you need to read. I thought this was kind of a weird problem, if you reach this problem, you probably aren’t managing your time well and need to readjust your curriculum in my opinion. However, the solution tackles this problem similar to what I was thinking, managing your time better. The solution is to maintain a reading list, this isn’t to only manage the books you read but also to reflect on past reading habits and you can use this info to construct a path on what to read next and what to focus on. I thought this was pretty clever, I wouldn’t have a reading list for that purpose, I would just use it to manage my reading habits. The solution does come with caveats though, it’s difficult to implement this pattern without having a deep understanding of your topic in order to figure out which books to read and the order. Ultimately, I think this pattern relies on having a deep understanding of what you want to learn about and what rabbit holes to go down in order to become more proficient at those topics.

For the action, you obviously create your reading list, however you keep it under source control and up to date. Pretty simple action to do, it’s just finding out where to start and what to read that is the hardest part of this pattern.

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

This week I decided to right about Nurture your passion. As I finish my academic career and move into the professional world, nurturing my passion is something I will be conscious of.

The problem laid out in this pattern is that the craftsmen is working in a workplace where his passion is stiffled. I think that everyone will experience this. For my part, I have gone to long team meetings that felt like they could have been half the time. And that is one of the best problems to have. Work places can be toxic, or there could not be oppurtunities to learn and grow. With this problem explained, Dave sugguests that the craftsmen should look to nurture his passion outside of his job.

There are a few ways to do this. One is my making interesting side projects or Breakable Toys. I could see this being a nice change of pace, where I could focus more on learning instead of meeting the deadline. Another solution is to meet kindred spirits. Dave suggests meet up groups. One thought I have here is that if I am coding for six to eight hours, five days a week. I may not feel like building breakable toys, or going to meet ups. I like writing code, but not everyone has time to write open source in addition to working a full time developer job.

The action Dave recommends is to write three positive ideas down to bring up at work everyday. And bring one up if things turn negative. Finding happiness and positivity at work is important for anyone. So I think is is a very meaningful pattern.

I think the best advice here is that if the craftsman finds himself at a firm that stiffles his passion, it is time to move on. This piece of advice is very relevant now as we are in the midst of “The Great Resignation”. I think finding a job that a craftman can at least partially nurture his passion is very important. We spend so much of our lives at work. So it is very important to find happiness there, if possible.

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

Find Mentors

When first understanding how you learn, and the general experience of how human beings learn, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you want to learn something, but you don’t know how to go about learning it. You take your first stab at it and find that you are learning some things but not learning constructively. You blunder around accumulating random knowledge and at some point, you might experience some success and get lucky. But more times than not you’ll blunder around and this effort might demoralize. The fault was not in your but your methods.

Mentor-ship and finding mentors is critical to learning something more specialized within your own skill set. This apprenticeship pattern perfectly describes an issue that I have frequently run into myself. It describes this path as exploring a blind alley, and this is an apt description. During my first sprint during my computer science capstone I made an effort to try and learn HTML. I looked over some example code and learned generally how to write it but fundamentally I didn’t understand how to structure it. I was blindly exploring the learning process and was failing.

I felt how I was failing and I knew I needed to reach out to something far more similar to a teacher. Some see the name mentor but what is a mentor but a highly skilled teacher. Yes of course there is more to teaching than just knowing the skill but they have the knowledge of learning the skill you are trying to and the path that helped them succeed. You need to find yourself a path that has been traveled by a human instead of blindly traveling that avenue.

I sought an actual HTML course that is commonly available in YouTube format and learned in a structured manner from a person who understood it as a whole. Now this isn’t to deter you from learning something new without a mentor as you do need the ability to learn new things without help, but something completely foreign to you requires a teacher. Mastery of a subject will require a mentor. Both require a desire to learn and to realize when you should seek other’s help.

From the blog CS@Worcester – A Boolean Not An Or by Julion DeVincentis and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The context given here is that You have been an apprentice for a little while. You know a few things and people are starting to look to you as a source of knowledge. Up until now, you have focused exclusively on your own improvement as a craftsman. To become a journeyman, you will need the ability to communicate effectively and bring other people up to speed quickly. A good way to prepare you for that is to develop the habit of regularly sharing the lessons you have learned. This may take the form of maintaining a blog or running “brown bag” sessions amongst your peers. You can also make presentations at conferences or write tutorials for the various technologies and techniques that you are learning.

The books highlight that Being part of a community of individuals where both learning on your own and humbly sharing that newly acquired knowledge are valued is one of the most powerful aspects of apprenticeship. It makes otherwise-esoteric fields of knowledge suddenly accessible, and provides apprentices with guides who speak their language. That being said some lessons should not be shared, and it’s important to keep in mind that there is an ethical dimension to knowledge. Before sharing something, consider whether that lesson is yours to share. It may be a secret, or it may harm others. Things that seem obvious to you because of your current context may in fact be your employer’s “secret sauce” and it is all too easy as an apprentice to overlook the consequences (legal, financial, and political) of sharing that knowledge.

I can personally relate to the content in this pattern because I have worked for 2 years as a tutor for introduction to programming class (java) and it has helped me on so many levels. I remember my first instinct was to decline the job when the position was first offered to me. But then I took “a risk” and started working as mentor and all of a sudden, my understanding in the class material got better. I got comfortable sharing knowledge in an effective way, and I got great public speaking skills

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

The context given here is that as a result of your dedication to learning, you have been hired or promoted (formally or informally) into a position with a title containing words such as “senior,” “architect,” or “lead”. The problem is then that your job title doesn’t match what you see in the mirror. When you introduce yourself in a professional setting, you feel as if you have to apologize or explain away the difference between your skill level and your job description. The solution suggested is not to allow your title to affect you. It is a distraction that should be kept on the outskirts of your consciousness. Use your title to gauge your organization, not yourself.

Impressive titles and responsibilities do not indicate that your apprenticeship is over. They only serve to remind you that there is a shortage of craftsmen in our industry so we should not be fooled by an impressive title. Another variant of this theme is informal versus formal titles. For instance, you may have grown into a position of authority on your team, despite your formal title remaining the same. These informal titles can be hard to ignore, because they are constantly reinforced by your peers, even if they conflict with your self-assessment. During these times, your connections with your mentors and peers will be critical to keep you grounded in reality.

I was really glad to see that the title subject was tackled in this book. So many times, I have found myself in jobs doing way more than what my title said sometimes even doing something completely different. In my current position, I am doing my job and some part of the data analyst job and at first, I got slightly annoyed but I have now realized that I would try to learn from it as much as possible rather than complain about it

I also really liked their action plan which is to Write down a long and descriptive version of your job title. Make sure it accurately reflects what you really do at work and your skill level. Keep this updated, and from time to time imagine how you would view a stranger who had this job description.

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