Sprint 5 Retrospective

This week’s blog is about our fifth sprint. During this sprint, we were finally being able to start tackling the issues that we have created. I learned a lot during this sprint than the previous one. In the previous one, we were creating issues pretty much left and right, placing them in our task board and then people work on it. The problem is that these tasks are not really assigned to anyone, and you can have two people working on the same thing without them knowing. This made it hard to keep track of the people working on an issue.

During the planning phase of this sprint, we planned on finishing the front end of the food pantry form. We tried to finish talking about what styling to use and what should the form look like. We also planned on adding more attributes or questions to the form since the main purpose of the form is to create a report every month that they could send or submit to the Worcester County Food Bank. The initial form only asks about the student ID, SNAP assistance, housing status, government help they are getting, and the number of household/income level. The last question was very vague since it only shows letters a through h, but no context on what they mean. Then there are the attributes that need to be added to the form like zip codes, participation in federal programs, primary household income source(household number of employed, unemployed, and other categories), and ages in the household that is served by the food pantry. These need to be added to the form to create the report.

The second meeting in our fifth sprint was comprised of fixing how the issues are laid out and what issues are still needed to be published. During this time, we were still organizing the issues that were put on the repository. The other team kept on closing issues that are not yet resolved, or maybe it was but it was never pushed into the repository, creating duplicated issues or issues that can be placed into one issue since they both pretty much mean the same thing. We also tried to organize the branches that were created. There were multiple branches created that are not working and we did not know which is the correct branch that we could work on since communication with the other team is not ideal.

During the second meeting still, I tried working on how we could correctly store the student ID field from scanning it using the card scanner. The original format of the student ID when scanned is something like ;0000111111100? but we only need characters 5 to 12. When I looked around for functions that I can use in angular, I found this javascript function called slice which slices the string given the position of the start character and the end character. I wanted it to slice the student ID when you submit the form so that it would be stored as a proper student ID so I thought I could just write this.model.studentId.slice(5, 3) and it would do that when you submit the form then show it in the submitted form, but it did not work. Although, using slice on the html file actually does it. I think that since it is a javascript function, that may be the reason why it is not working, I would definitely need to test it again and hopefully have it working during the next sprint.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Computer Science by csrenz and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Find Mentors || S.S. 10

Sams Ships (13)In this final installment of my individual apprenticeship patterns, I think an important one to write about would be Find Mentors. To summarize the main point of this one, I would say that it encourages people to observe their role and their surroundings to see where they can find the most value from learning or use their resources. It encourages you to look at things from one level back instead of blindly jumping into something right away.

Personally, I have been in a role where I had to figure out a lot of things that could have just been taught to me. I quickly learned that I would be able to ask other junior developers how they managed to learn things on their own and it helped me a lot. If other junior developers were not available, then I would work my way up to people who had the most recent on-boarding experience and hope that they could recall the process I was currently going through. For the most part, that worked out well!

Thanks to this pattern, I thought it was useful to think about and remind ourselves that even though our mentors will know a lot more about us, they still do not know everything. They are still continuing to learn as much as we are in their own careers.

I thought I should update this blog to throw in a little hidden announcement if anyone actually reads these that I will be learning at a company with about 100 peers going through the same thing. This makes me feel a lot more confident knowing that I will have a designated support system around me and have mentors around.

Overall, I agreed with the pattern. This is because I can testify with my personal experiences how useful it was to be able to utilize my resources including being able to ask mentors questions or just find my own. A common question I had for my interviewers was, “Will I have a mentor or support system along the way throughout my career progression?” Personally, it is important for me to have a designated place to go for support because it just takes one more worry away about having to ask somebody a question.

It is now time to conclude my individual apprenticeship pattern series! I hope you have at least learned one thing from it because I have learned so many things.

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

Sprint Retrospective 3

As we are going deeper in the class project, we are learning how to be more productive. After the first two sprints, that we created the project, the git repository and organize the projects between the official repository in CS-Worcester and our class organization. My team decided to work in the Search Bar component and … Continue reading Sprint Retrospective 3 →

From the blog cs-wsu – Kristi Pina's Blog by kpina23 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

WSU x AMPATH || Sprint 5 Retrospective

Sams Ships (14)Over the past two weeks, my team continued to discuss what we are working on as usual. We have come to the conclusion that we will add our Search Bar component once there are updates and more of a base to work off of. This was concluded after we realized that the process would be much more efficient. The parameters and details on the search bar would be harder to figure out without making up a base anyways.

Some advice for others who may be working on the same thing would be to try and collaborate or discuss potential orders between groups if one thing may depend on another. That would make it much simpler from the start if possible so there aren’t any clashes or time wasted on doing extra work that could have just been done by one group or team.

In the meantime, I did a little more research on the AMPATH system out of curiosity since we are going to be building onto their work. I found out that there are 500+ care sites in Kenya! It is interesting to think about the potential impact our work may make on how AMPATH carries out their process. Their initiative reminds me of what Enactus at Worcester State strives for when they work on projects to help people or organizations in the community “sustain their own success, connect them with universal health insurance, train next generation medical professionals, and research new breakthroughs and best practices.” Being able to help a healthcare organization is pretty meaningful, especially as a project through my capstone.

A way to tie our 348 course (Software Process Management) with our 448 (Capstone) course would be through now being able to use Travis CI and Heroku. It was interesting being able to experience using these in class and help our peers use it and now be able to use them in our capstone. I think the practice we got was nice because I found that my peers and I were more comfortable with following steps that were written out and explained to us instead of just “going for it.” I have also noticed that our 348 course helped us pay more attention to how we interact with others, which is very useful for the future when we will be working in teams of developers to create or update new technologies. One more thing which I found useful was seeing Travis CI load, and the race against time when it came to classmates pushing code at the same time; it made me push myself to be a little faster while at the same time not be sloppy about what I was putting into my code.

Overall, we discussed what we will do in these coming weeks as the semester comes to a close. The project we are planning on presenting will feature a search bar which we plan to implement by then. I am excited to see what we end up with in terms of helping AMPATH and their healthcare system!

 

 

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

Apprenticeship Patterns: Sustainable Motivations

Hello and welcome back to Benderson’s blog! This is the last week of a blog being about an apprenticeship pattern and did I pick a good one for the last one. The apprenticeship pattern that we are talking about today is called “Sustainable Motivations”. As a person who has had motivation issues through his life, finding a job after college is another challenge for me to motivate myself to get my resume out there and try to get a job close by but that isn’t specifically what this apprenticeship pattern is about. “Sustainable Motivations” mostly talks about how while at a job, if you’re not able to do a task your way because the consumer wants it done a certain way even though it could be done easier or faster doing something else. This may make you hate your job because you are just doing what ever your job is telling you to do when your whole life you have been doing your coding on your own accord. The pattern gives three different scenarios in which a lack of motivation could come and they mostly focused on the money being what keeps people around. That is one of the big reasons I went into computer science because I knew the money would be good and the other reason was that I have always loved computers. My dad has always had a saying that if you don’t like going to your job, then it isn’t the job for you which can be true for some people but if I believe if I’m making a decent amount of money, I can tough up if I don’t enjoy my job. The solution to the problem at hand is just writing down a bunch of sentences stating why you’re motivated and you read them over and over and hopefully you become more motivated.

This apprenticeship pattern is another one that is closely related to where I am right now with going into the computer science field. My biggest fear is not knowing enough to do a job and only working for about a week and then getting fired but another fear of mine is that I won’t like my job and that I will want to quit and have to maybe find another job in another field. Hopefully that doesn’t happen and I can use this pattern to my advantage and write down the many reasons why I wanted to work in the computer science field in the first place. The money that I will be making will not be a problem to me after seeing what most computer scientists are making now a days, I have a lot of dreams and aspirations of being well off in money and being able to do a lot of things with the money I make through my job and I know computer science is a great pathway to those dreams. Remember, if you’re lacking motivation, write down some sentences to why you chose to do what you do and hopefully you will find motivation in that. Thank you for joining me on Benderson’s blog this week, have a great week!

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

“Expand Your Bandwidth” Apprenticeship Pattern

I am writing this blog post about the “Expand Your Bandwidth” apprenticeship pattern from the Apprenticeship Patterns book. To summarize the idea of this pattern, it is about learning about a greater variety of topics than just what tends to be the most relevant. The chapter describes the problem as having a narrow understanding of software development that focuses only on the low-level details of past work. The solution to this is to just start learning about different things. I think that this is a relevant concept that I seem to be dealing with at the moment. My specialty is computer science, and I have a deep understanding of many of the fundamental concepts in computer science. Software development, though, involves much more than just computer science, and I have not researched software development beyond researching computer science. The problem here is that I have a narrow understanding of software development, and the solution is to research the other topics that are important to understand besides computer science.

I think that this chapter relates closely to the “Concrete Skills” apprenticeship pattern. The main difference is that this assumes you already have a full set of skills that are already being applied in a day job, and “Concrete Skills” is about developing those skills in the first place. I have not yet begun a career in software development, though, so these problems are effectively the same. I have a narrow understanding of software development, and this narrow understanding is a set of concrete skills.

There are often times that I do research new and unfamiliar concepts, but these tend to be concepts that are still within the field of computer science and not software development. I do have a goal of learning and understanding more, and there are a lot of topics that I find interesting enough to read about, develop some experience with and practice applying. This book constantly emphasizes the importance of a willingness to read, practice, research and learn, but it puts an equal emphasis on software development. My concerns should be lessened by just applying myself more toward software development in particular.

From the blog CS@Worcester – klapointe blog by klapointe2 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Reflecting on “Apprenticeship Patterns” – Unleash Your Enthusiasm

As I’ve been progressing throughout my computer science education, I’ve realized that I’m pretty psyched about coding and computing in general. Just thinking about how much that can be done with computer science is enough to get me excited about the kind of work I’m doing. I’m sure that at some point in my career, it may become harder to maintain this excitement for what I’m doing. Even though it’s incredibly cool, it’ll inevitably be my daily routine. This week’s pattern has to do with the continued passion and excitement that I should maintain about computing, even if others around me might not reflect it as much.

Unleash Your Enthusiasm presents the hypothetical situation where an apprentice, with a lack of experience in the field, brings enthusiasm for the subject as part of their skillset to a team. However, the team may be more established and therefore could be less outward about their enthusiasm towards their work. They may be focused more on completing their projects without taking the time to be excited about it. As a result, the apprentice may feel more obligated to keep their enthusiasm more inward and conform to what they think is the norm for the rest of the team. It is imperative that the apprentice keeps this level of excitement and isn’t afraid to let it out, even if others don’t necessarily share it or express it.

I honestly feel very fortunate to have surrounded myself with people who not only support my passion for computing, but also take part in that same enthusiasm. However, I completely agree that even if I were to end up in a situation where I may feel more pressured to subdue this flame of excitement for computer science, I should still not let this affect how much I love what I do. I’ve worked in some teams in my classes where my groupmates were determined to get work done, but they weren’t really excited about it. This has, at times, negatively influenced me so that I spent more time keeping my head down and refraining from showing how I really felt about our progress. But, as I finish up my undergraduate classwork and start my professional career, I am confident that I will have that supportive environment to fully express my passion for computing.

Thanks for reading!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Hi, I'm Kat. by Kat Law and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Studying the Classics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to the article: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/apprenticeship-patterns/9780596806842/ch06s03.html

 

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.

Sprint 4

Hi everyone and welcome back to another sprint retrospective blog post. This will be the fourth sprint retrospective blog post of this semester. During this sprint number 4, we had many objectives completed. We added some new features like the hyperlinks to the database so that when the tab has been clicked it would navigate to the new link. We reformat the whole prototype so it would look more cleaner and more better-looking product. We decided on what device we were going to scale the application to which was an iPad mini. The scale will only look exact on that certain device and not any other because we haven’t made that a priority. We are just waiting to have a working finished prototype before thinking ahead and making the applications more universal. The styling was easy, once we decided the font, color, etc. Every meeting we had went smoothly as we discuss the future of our component. There some of the stuff that we are still working on like moving the Trello issues to GitHub and investigate the library type things in Angular. So far have been using a device simulator to test the applications as it is the closest thing, we can to think of to test it. We did more research on mobile angular documentation so we can benefit from the perks that mobile angular has to offer. We added a couple of new stories to our sprint backlog. First, as a developer working on ng2-amrs I need to learn about testing in Angular so I can write tests for our new code. Also, as a developer working on ng2-amrs I need to watch the provided YouTube tutorials on the #ampathoffcial Slack channel, to get a better idea about what kind of web applications we’re building. I also started working on the PowerPoint for our presentation because we are almost coming to the end and finishing our application. We also finished some of doing task which we move to done column like for example we moved keep an eye out for Zeplin shared folder – where designs will be to done folder and sign up for zeplin – send info to bio Greg – verify email. There is some other task that we are also working on the side like figuring out the mocking database, duplicating amrs service – possibly using json file to store data. All in all, we are almost finish with the ampath left navigation bar application. Everyone in the group so far has done a good job contributing to the project. We doing a good job coming up with new feature to add to the project every meeting we have. We can very familiar with the method of scrum now and see why it is a great system when working with a group because it keeps everything organize so things will move smoother. I also like to mention that I like where we are at in the project and happy with how the product has turn out so far.

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

Confront Your Ignorance

For this weeks blog pattern post I will be looking into the pattern known as confronting your ignorance. The context behind this one is that you have identified the gaps within your skillset that are thereby relevant in your everyday work. The problem that will arise from this is that the tools and techniques needed to master seem unobtainable as you don’t know where to begin. These may already be around you with people around you doing them but there is an expectation you already have this knowledge. The remedy to this that you should pick one skill, tool, or technique and seek to fill the gaps of your knowledge about it. Finding out the most effective ways that suit your style. For some the best approach involves getting an overview of introductory articles and FAQs. While others may find jumping straight into the construction of Breakable Toys the best approach to understanding something. Whichever approach works do not forget to ask around your Kindred Spirits and mentors to see if someone already has the skill and if they will be willing to share their knowledge. Others may be actively seeking this skill as well which can allow you both to work towards this goal. There aren’t enough hours in a day to hone all your skills to a high level, so making necessary trade offs between them is something that will have to happen. This pattern is closely related to Expose Your Ignorance, but implementing it is a less difficult task to your pride since it can be down privately. But eventually you may have to Expose your Ignorance as well, since learning in public will allow an apprentice to being their transition to a journeyman. Taking the list of items from Exposing your Ignorance and striving to learn each one, while crossing the completed off is a good place to start. This way you can see gaps you maybe hadn’t noticed before. This pattern is important to say the least, one that most people should honestly follow if they need to.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Matt's Blog by mattyd99 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.