Reflection Sprint 5

We now have 3 issues to work on. We still have the button problem where they want us to move it to a different location, a new problem that they want us to change the color of the patient banner depending on whether or not they are deceased, and another new issue to notify the user that the changes have been saved successfully. Our button push was not accepted because it did not meet their requirements. We were told to put it in the optimal position and now they want us to lock it onto the screen so when you scroll the button stays in a fixed position. Hopefully we can continue to get work done and get an issue done before next sprint starts. Our teamwork is still improving, we are learning how to collaborate well even though we are all working on separate issues. As of now I like where we are, hopefully we continue to grow as a team.

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

Reflection Sprint 4

This sprint was a little bit tricky because it was right in the middle of spring break, and people were off doing their own things. We did however fix the button issue using the guidelines that were provided with us. We pushed the changes and are now waiting for them to accept it. As of now, we are planning on breaking off into smaller teams and taking on a few problems. Assigning six people to one issue is not the most efficient way to solve issues because that leaves most people with a lot of downtime. I can see us slowly getting better at working together as a team. The decision to break off into smaller teams to tackle more issues was a game changer for us. Hopefully we can continue to improve as a team further down the road.

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

Reflection Sprint 3

 

In this sprint we are staying up to date with all the tasks we need to get done. We ran into a problem in issue APTS 271 where we could not find the back to drafted form button. There is a form tab on the left hand side of ampath, where we believe the button would be located, but we cannot open any of the forms. This is stopping us from getting anything done. We ended up sending the developers a message in an attempt to fix this issue. In response, we got assigned a test server to work on in which the forms were working so we are able to progress on our issue. Next sprint we can hopefully resolve the issue completely. I think we are starting to work better as a team compared to previous sprints. We are communicating a lot better than we were before this sprint, this helps to get work done in a quick, more efficient manner.

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

The Clean Coder Chapters 13 and 14

Chapter 13 is about teams and projects. It focuses on how work should be distributed through the team and how you actually need to work together as a team rather than focusing on your own problems. It is hard to build a good team, it is better to form persistent teams that move forward from one project to another. To start with, team members start by forming relationships. They learn others strengths and weaknesses and over time the team will start to “gel”. Personally i have experienced what it is like working on a team that doesn’t fit well together. It is a rough time and operations definitely don’t go as smoothly as they should. This is why it is important to have a good team that you are comfortable working with.

Chapter 14 is about mentoring, apprenticeships, and craftsmanship. While it is true that school can teach you the theory of programming, this does not mean that you know everything there is to know about it. School cannot teach the discipline, practice and skill of being a craftsman. The only way to acquire these skills is to practice and to gain them through work. A craftsman is a professional who works in an efficient quick way, and knows when to say no when necessary. This chapter helps put it into perspective what you need to do to become a master programmer. the only way to achieve this is to practice and learn through work experiences.

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

The Software Craftsman, Chapters 9 & 10

Chapter 9 goes into detail about recruitment for software development jobs and some of the issues with it. Mostly what I took away from this chapter is how to recognize what possible companies and business know what kind of developer they are looking for versus a company that is just looking for anyone who might fit their need. The rest of this chapter seemed to mainly target people that were in the position to hire people, and what their focus should be to make sure they attract and get the best developer that they can. For right now, I didn’t find those parts too useful, but hopefully this knowledge will be useful later on in my career.

Chapter 10 focuses on the interviewing process and what recruiters are looking for in a potential addition to their team. Mancuso list a bunch of useful things to be aware of when going into an interview. Some of the things that I found useful were ask questions about the company and the team, make sure to highlight your achievements as well as point out issues that you’ve dealt with, and make sure to talk about want you want to achieve in your career and how you believe that this position will help you. He also points out different ways to analyze an interview to see what they might be looking for and how they judge new candidates. Mancuso points out that, during an interview, it’s ok to make sure that you are being asked questions that are relevant to the position you want. There were also different ways that an interview could be held, from pair-programming interviews to even having pre-interview coding exercises. Some of these I’ve heard of before, but I thought that this book did a good job of pointing them out and explaining them so that graduates would be aware that they might end up in one of these scenarios. Overall this chapter was extremely useful for people that are just graduating, and I definitely took away some of the things to look out for in interviews (mostly about what to say ad bring up during an interview since I’ve done so few of them).

From the blog CS WSU – Techni-Cat by clamberthutchinson and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Software Craftsman, Chapters 7 & 8

Chapter 7 focused on how to make sure use technical practices at your place of work. For example, integrating techniques from TDD and using paired programming to help your team focus on what they are trying to do, while also making sure that less mistakes are made. This chapter also helped with ways to suggest to your team that using these practices will be helpful in the long run, if they are having issues adapting to them now.

Chapter 8 focuses on how to focus on career goals and how to create new opportunities to pursue in the field of computer programming. Mancuso stresses the point that new opportunities won’t just show up when you need them. Instead he says to create them yourself by learning new languages, expanding your network of people, blogging about interesting articles or projects you’re working on, and going to conferences. These are all wonderful suggestions that college graduates should definitely follow while in school and after they leave. Also look at jobs as an investment into what you want to learn because this will help in the long run of finding a job that is stable and secure in a field you want to be in; I found this kind of as an obvious statement since you want to make sure you don’t end up doing something you later dislike. I also agree with Mancuso’s observations of what a job should hold for a person (autonomy, mastery, and purpose) because with out these things than you would fall into the trap of having a boring job which might later lead into you not being able to care about the field your in anymore. This would obviously lead into the possibility of being fired from that job and not being able to find a new one. I think this whole chapter was a pretty useful one since it focused mostly on what a college graduate should know about applying for jobs after classes.

From the blog CS WSU – Techni-Cat by clamberthutchinson and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Software Craftsman Chapter 3-4

The author brings up some interesting point in which it takes more than a few developer to have the craftsman model to work. The entire company has to embrace it. It was interesting hearing him talking about how there would be developer swaps between different companies in order to see how another company operates and bring back information where it can help improve one’s own company. This might not be feasible in every situation as many times companies are competing against each other.

The author again tell us that in order to be a software craftsman, you have to be constantly learning. In order to want to constantly learn, of course you have to be passionate about programming. Practicing new problems and figured out how the problem is actually being solved instead of just trying to brute force solving it. Doing personal pet projects to constantly refine and improve old skillsets while also learning new ones.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by nealw5 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Software Craftsman Chapter 1-2

It is interesting to see how the author view seniority in programming. In most places, seniority comes with years of experience. One thing that is different in Computer Science than in other field is the constant evolving of the tech, language, framework, and tools. Having years of working in the field and eventually you may become obsolete if you don’t try and constantly learn new stuff. A person that is entry level might know more about the latest node.js technique than a senior developer.

However, seniority does not just mean how well you can program. Seniority can also mean you know how to communicate effectively, how you work well with team, how well you can lead other people. An entry level developer may have better coding skills than a senior developer but I doubt he has other experience that may be critical in a company.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by nealw5 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Software Craftsman chapter 9 & 10

Chapter 9 talks about recruitment, essentially how recruiters should go about searching for qualified developers. One of the problem with finding developers is how recruiters write their job description. Adding things like years of experience, academic background, certifications is how most companies job description looks like. I have done a lot of job searching in this field and i can agree that most of the description are just specific requirements needed from developers. They fail to focus on the companies culture and values and that is why they are not satisfied we developers they’ve hired.

Chapter 10 continues the previous chapter and talks about what to look for in an interview. Just like a job description should not always list specific requirements, a developers resume shouldn’t be just about knowledge and years of experience. During an interview, recruiters should be looking for passionate developers who are willing to learn or try new things. Those are the developers where if you put them in the right environment, they can really shine. One thing i can agree with from this chapter is that developers should interview other developers. A good developer will know what their company needs and what to look for; they will hire developers that are even better than they are.

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

Sprint 6

We ran into issues with our solution to the problem.

  1. Our fix modifies the npm webpack which is in another github repo
  2. It is a band aid solution since the weeks still shows as the pre set 2,4,6,8,16
  3. We are unable to use Travis CLI since it is not the ng2-amrs repo

In the end, we contacted AMPATH team through Slack and figured out it was through their JSON schema. We contacted the admin who had control over the JSON schema over JIRA. The admin updated the weeks to show 24, and 36 on the dropdown. The issue was then fixed and close.

It just shows how important communication is. When you have a problem, you have to be proactive and ask question on what is going on.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Site Title by nealw5 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.