Sprint 2 Reflections

This second sprint went very well, I’ve learned a lot about how useful Trello can be. I’ve also realized how communication is a huge part of completing a project, even if it’s just setting things up. Everyone in our group was able to get ng2-amrs up and running, with the help of all of our group. I wouldn’t proceed any differently than how I have been, we finally have everything up and running successfully and I’m excited to start working on some bug fixes and coding.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Software Testing by kyleottblog and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Clean Coder, Chapter 11 & 12

The focus of this week read was: Chapter 11: Pressure and Chapter 12: Collaboration, from The Clean Coder by Robert C. Martin. I can personally relate to these two topics covered in these chapters because I have been in these situations in my life. In chapter 11, Uncle Bob explains the creation, managing and avoidance of pressure. In chapter 12, he stresses on collaborating with other people and caring about your career, employer and colleagues.

All of us have been under pressure one way or another during our lives. Most people get panic, angry or messes everything up without thinking, slowing down and evaluating the situation with cold brain. This is exactly what Uncle Bob is trying to explain. Avoid pressure situations if you can, but if not, then the biggest accelerator to worsen the situation is to get panic and blaming others with anger. I have been in pressure situations where I have contributed to worsen it, then taking a back-step and understanding the full scope of the situation, and try to come up with a best solution. I personally feel like the four ways of handling pressure mentioned in chapter 11 would work great in avoiding and controlling pressure professionally. I specially agree with not panicking, communicate with others and get help. I have tried the communication and get help technique in the past and it worked great for me, but staying calm is a huge problem for me. I need to work on controlling my panic attacks during stressful situations.

Throughout my academic career, I believe that I have learn more through collaborating with others than I have learned individually by myself. That is why I strongly agree with Uncle Bob when he states that professionals pair-program because it is the best way to share knowledge with each other. I am a strong supporter of group projects and team collaboration because I feel like every person has something different to offer in a group or team which proves the point that two heads are better than one head.

From the blog Software Learning and Development – Haider Hussain by hhussainsite and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Clean Coder(Week 6)

This blog post will revolve around chapters 11 and 12

Chapter 11 is all about pressure. Professionals thrive under pressure. If you look at athletes like, Tom Brady, Steph Curry, Lebron James  and others you can see that they thrive in this kind of environment. This is what makes them great. One may say that it’s impossible to avoid pressure, but I beg to differ. One way to avoid pressure is to do your work early, on time, and don’t make commitments that you can’t see through.

 

Chapter 12 talks about collaboration. When I first started programming, I noticed a lot of people working alone. I always preferred working with others, because it’s efficient and if you get stuck on something, the other person can help you out. You can’t do everything on your own, but with the help of collaboration, you can achieve greatness.

 

From the blog CS@Worcester – My Blog by justcodeit94 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Clean Coder 11-12

In chapter 12 of Clean Coder, the book talked about collaboration. In the end, the book said that”Perhaps we didn’t get into programming to work with people. Tough luck for
us. Programming is all about working with people.” This just goes back on how communication is one of the most important thing for being a programmer.

Unless you are working on some passion project and is the sole developer, chances you are going to work in a more corporate setting. Knowing the social norm there is important. Meeting the deadline set by your boss is extremely important.

Not only with employers, working with your fellow programmers can be extremely difficult also. You have to talk to fellow workers to understand their section of the code, especially on huge projects. You have to talk to others to make sure you don’t have redundancies on the project. You might run into issues if office politics come into play. However, collaboration is extremely important to being a programmer.

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

The Clean Coder chapter 9 & 10

In this week’s chapters of The Clean Coder, Robert Martin talks about the importance of meetings and when to determine that a meeting is worth your time. He also talks about  the tools we can use to make accurate, sound, and effective estimations.

According to Martin, not all meetings require your time. If you find out that your time could be spent on something more productive, you can politely refuse the invitation. Even if your presence is demanding by someone of higher authority, you still have to determine whether that authority is more significant than your work schedule. Ultimately, your project is priority over many things and you have to manage your time well in order to complete that project accordingly. Martin also talks about “focus-manna” which programming requires a lot of. Essentially, focus-manna is your ability to concentrate and maintain your focus and unfortunately its limited. It is essential that you use your focus-manna appropriately and recharge by doing activities that doesn’t require much focus.

In chapter 10, we learned about estimations. There is a profound difference of how programmers and businesses understand estimations. Businesses sees them as a commitment and programmers view them as guesses. However in reality, it is difficult for an individual to understand the true nature of an estimation. There is an equation used by the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) to calculate estimations. This was done with trivariate analysis which is consisted of three numbers: Optimistic, Nominal, and pessimistic estimate.

Given these three estimates, we can describe the probability distribution as
follows:
• μ = O+ 4N + P
6

This scheme is designed to help prevent optimistic expectations.

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

Clean Code Chapters 11 and 12 (Week 5)

Chapter 11 in the Clean Coders targets a topic that was one of the factors that went into me deciding whether or not I should be a programmer, and that is dealing under pressure. The author goes into different occupations and how they have to handle pressure or else there will be consequences on their health and others as well. Pressure can include in terms of the programming field, creating what you need before a deadline occurs, doing everything in the right and best way, and also making sure the software works and not bug-fested. Pretty much advice is given to focus and not panic to make situations worse.

Pressure is everywhere, but not really seen as much compared to other scenarios or occupations. I can easily think about how programmers can get stress and struggle form the challenges of being a programmer. Not even sure if it’s worth the salary unless people are ok with the conditions they may experience.

Chapter 12 of the Clean Coders covers the topic of teamwork, where no enormous or ambitious project can be completed individually and requires the work of many developers and different departments. Programmers now-a-days program together in pairs which is effective in a way where coding performance is improved.  The author is telling the story about how he got fired for not taking his job seriously while preparing for a milestone, and then goes on to talk about how working with people is all about the concept of coding.

I know that if I did not ask for help from other people during college, I would have had a hard time coding without insight from my class mates and working with them on programming projects. Teamwork is definitely important and it was expressed well in the later courses for the major where we pair up with other classmates to work on projects.

 

From the blog CS@Worcester – Dan's Tech Rant by danbarbara and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Clean Code Chap 11 + 12 Week 6

Pressure: 

Pressure can make or break people. There are some who thrive, some who fail. The professional developer is calm and contained under these circumstances, sticks to their roots, and finds the best route to hit the deadline. However avoiding pressure from the start would be the better option; do not make a promise you cannot keep. In other words, only make a commitment you can fulfil, keep the code clean, have a plan, and work in a way that there is no need to change it during a crisis. In relation to our class, we are under pressure during our sprints to finish what is on the table. If we accept too much, we might not be able to finish making us look worse.

Collaboration:

The majority of programmers prefer to work alone; that’s just how it is. There needs to be a common understanding for communication amongst the business folks, clients, dev team, etc. Collective code ownership and pairing create this level of communication that is necessary.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Kyle Polewaczyk by kpolewaczyk and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The Clean Coder (Chapter 11 & 12)

Chapter 11 of the clean coder book is about pressure and how to deal with it as a professional. According to the author of the book the best way to stay calm under pressure is avoid situations that cause pressure.

Other ways to avoid pressure:

  1. Commitments (avoid committing to deadlines you are not sure you can meet)
  2. Staying Clean (The best way to go fast  and keep deadlines is to write clean code)

If you find yourself in a pressure situation, you can do the following:

  1. Don’t panic (Think the problem through and plot a course to recovery)
  2. Communicate ( Tell your team of your troubles; avoid creating surprises. Surprises multiply pressure by ten.)
  3. Get Help ( When the heat is on, find an associate who will pair program with you. You can get things done much faster this way)

 

Chapter 12 is about collaboration. It is highly important to collaborate with people. Software development is more dealing with people than programming.

Both of these chapters  pass on  some useful and common sense ideas.

From the blog CS448 – The blog about software by Sudarshan and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 6: The Clean Coder (Chapters 11 & 12)

This week I read chapter 11 & 12 of The Clean Coder.  Chapter 11 discussed how to handle pressure.  I really enjoyed reading this chapter because at some point everyone is going to feel like they are under a lot of pressure.  The most important thing this chapter taught me is that you need to stay clam and don’t panic.  Panicking will cause you to be too stressed and not be able to think clearly.  This is not good for anyone.  You need to just stay focused and do what you can do.  A little tip I always think about when I am stressed out about school or something is that it’s not the end of the world.  Even if you can’t get something done, most people are very understanding of certain situations. However, you always need to COMMUNICATE.  This chapter talked about how no one likes surprises and that is very true.  If you are open and explain why you can’t get something done ahead of time, there will be no surprises when the due date comes along.  Many times people are willing to help.  One point that the chapter talked about that stuck out to me was to always avoid pressure.  You can do this by not committing to something you can’t finish and keeping your code as clean as possible.

Chapter 12 talked about yet another extremely important topic of the computer science world.  It talked all about working together.  Programming is literally all about working together and being able to collaborate your work together to make a great product.  The chapter talked about how you need to learn to talk to people and work together.  I know there are a lot of people who would rather work alone, but as a programmer you are almost never working alone.  I can already relate to this chapter.  Even just in my computer science major classes, most projects and group activities consist of us working together.  I personally work well in a team and I like working with people.  Collaborating with others has never been an issue for me!

From the blog CS@Worcester – Alex's Comp Sci Blog by alexsblog13 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Week 5: The Clean Coder

This week I read chapters 9 & 10 of The Clean Coder.  Chapter 9 talked about a very very very important topic; time management.  A big thing this chapter discussed that I do agree with is that attending every meeting you are invited to is a simple waste of time.  During my internship, there was meetings I didn’t even attend because it wouldn’t have benefitted me in anyway.  You need to use your time wisely and not attend a million meetings a day, and then only have 3 hours to do your work.  It was very interesting that the author talked about your caffeine intake during this chapter.  During the work day, I tend to sometimes overload on caffeine. Although it does really help to keep me awake and focused, I can agree that I sometimes get a little too hyper.  If you are all cracked out on caffeine, you may start to focus on the wrong things which isn’t good to do.  I agreed with pretty much everything this chapter talked about.  I learned first hand that meetings can be an incredible waste of time, too much caffeine can be a not so good thing, and long walks and getting out of the office can really help.

Chapter 10 of The Clean Coder  discussed the topic of; estimation.  As a computer programmer, you need to be aware of what you can and cannot get done, and how long it is going to take you.  The book states, “Professionals draw a clear line between estimates and commitment.” This quote stuck out to me because that is extremely true.  A professional person wouldn’t make it seem like they were committed to finishing something if they knew they couldn’t get it done.  Computer programmers are human, and even though you should get something done by a certain date, sometimes it’s just not doable.

“They do not commit unless they know for certain they will succeed. They are careful not to make any implied commitments. They communicate the probability distribution of their estimates as clearly as possible, so that managers can make appropriate plans.”

The paragraph above was the most important thing said in the whole chapter.  I will definitely take this with me in my work in the future.

 

 

From the blog CS@Worcester – Alex's Comp Sci Blog by alexsblog13 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.