Chapter 1, 2-6 Introductions

The introductions of the chapters gave a really nice and simple outline in the different ways to expand your learning and tools that are available to be a better apprentice. It also defines what it means to be an apprentice, or journeyman or master, and where the origins of the listed apprenticeship patterns originate from. The most useful section I found was the section explaining that without discipline, we would let ourselves be constantly distracted by different things in our environments so that we would avoid work. I felt this applied heavily to myself, as when I do work from home I find myself easily distracted by different things. My cats jump on the desk and want attention or Discord notifications ringing in my ear. After reading the section, I realized that I do not actively attempt to get away from those distractions and will end up spending time giving attention to my cats or responding to my friends on Discord. I need to attempt to disengage from these distractions when I am trying to work so that I can produce quality work, and not something that when I look back upon it I will be disappointed. Another introduction that I found heavily applying to myself was the section regarding self assessments. The reading notes; “You must be willing to let go of your perceived competence and allow yourself to recognize that you have traveled only a short distance on The Long Road.” I feel that I can get lost in my abelites and my limitations, and I will either take on too much work at once or not enough work, or that I will become too confident in myself, not realizing that I have only scratched the surface of a certain topic or skill. Reading this made me realize that I need to constantly be aware of what I can and can’t do, and if that I am ahead of my fellow apprentices that I need to not become over-confident, and maybe help guide them along the way so that they can accomplish certain tasks as well. All of these apprenticeships patterns will create a better teamwork environment.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Noelan Chabot's Blog by nchabot1 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

My Thoughts on Apprenticeship Patterns Intros

This week, I read chapter 1 and the introductions of chapters 2-6 of “Apprenticeship Patterns” by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. I appreciate the values that the book covers. They basically say that we should work to better ourselves and failure doesn’t mean that we ourselves are failures, but that we should take different approaches next time. I like the way that we should work to get things done and do not need to aim for complete perfection since it may not be realistic for what we’re working with.

I also like the little story they gave with the teacup ceremony and the young philosopher. The story was a great way to introduce the notion that we should be freeing ourselves from being stuck in a certain mindset and should be more open to learning new things from others, and I think that’s a great thing to think about moving forward.

I found it useful that the chapters also mention getting out of your comfort zone. I think that’s something important to do, and I believe we need to do so to improve, and I agree that we should be thinking about not just being average or a little above average, but we should be aiming for more than that since there is much ahead of us.

I thought the introduction to Chapter 6 was a little interesting with how it mentions that we need books for studying. I see that it can be like a “don’t forget the roots” belief as it feels like a “please don’t underestimate the old books, it mentions things the internet does not”. Thinking more about this intro, I think it’s important that we expand our learning outside of the classroom and it’s our responsibility to study related concepts and to assign different material and sources to ourselves.

I don’t really disagree with anything in the reading. I’m mostly just taking in all the information and they’re all fairly applicable for working towards self-improvement. The chapters that seem most relevant to me are 1, 2, 3, and 4. They all get me thinking about not settling where I am and to strive to increase my knowledge. We should be more open to opportunities and not get tied up with what we already know or past experiences, and should try our best to learn more from others and use different sources. I’m looking forward to reading and discussing the design patterns from this book.

From the blog CS@Worcester – CS With Sarah by Sarah T and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Solidifying Values

I think the entirety of the Thea’s Pantry documentations page is useful, especially as someone that may be the scrum master for the team, I think that it is of utmost importance to take in this knowledge. I can imagine it being the scrum master’s responsibility to have the clients stories in mind and maintain a workflow while the team is able to self-organize and operate well.

What was most interesting to me was the Values Page from the LibreFoodPantry. I find them to be very noble and respect the efforts in “ensur[ing] a healthy and safe environment in which to collaborate and learn”. The Manifesto for Agile Software development page stood out to me as being very noble for some reason and I really enjoyed how those specific values were laid out. I think that as a humanitarian project it is important to have well defined values, ones which drive the mission. The FOSSisms were also intriguing to me as the concept of FOSS culture is pretty new to me. On a deeper level there are some FOSSism that I could say are words to live by outside of software development, wisdom that can carry over into our own personal lives. The topic of values in general have stood out to me, within my own life there’s been a presence of solidifying what my values are and seeing that there appears to be defined values within software development kinda serves as a source of hope and inspiration for building on my own values.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Sovibol's Glass Case by Sovibol Keo and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

My Introduction to Thea’s Pantry and the LibreFoodPantry Project!

The LibreFoodPantry is one of the most interesting projects I’ve read about. The mission and goal of this project speaks for itself. It is supposed to cover a plethora of goals, such as bringing clients, users, and developers together to maintain or complete various humanitarian project, as they explain. Not only that but these projects are put together so that instructors can expand or enhance computer science education and experience. It is also worth noting that these projects are apart of (FOSS) free and open-source software, so any developer can jump in and modify the software as they would like. The mission of this organization is very wholesome and goes to show how computer science education can be used for the greater good. The Thea’s Pantry, a food pantry for the Worcester State University Community is one of the projects that is taking initiative to stop hunger that is happening with in Worcester State. The “User Stories” tab in the git repository for the project, explains how the entire project works. Basically, going to into detail of the whole process. What the would happen if a guest approached Thea’s Pantry, what information the staff members would need from you and how the information will be used with in the system when taking food or donating it. This information is key when it comes to knowing what the software intends to accomplish when it comes to Thea’s Pantry.

From the blog CS@Worcester – FindKelvin by Kelvin Nina and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

LibreFoodPantry and Theas Pantry

Hello everyone! This semester, I will be starting my blog off talking about two food pantries: Libre Food Pantry and Thea’s Pantry. Libre Food Pantry is an open source project that computer science students and any one else who is interested can contribute to. What I found interesting while browsing the Libre Food Pantry website was their mission. It is really great that the computer science community has come up with a way to have computer science majors practice developing projects that may be useful for a good cause, the good cause here being supporting food pantries with free software. This way, the CS majors can feel that they are both learning through developing the software and supporting a good cause at the same time. The fact that this is open source is also great news to me because I am a big supporter for things being open source. After looking and reading through the Thea’s pantry documentation page, I found the Architecture page particularity useful because it shows the inner components of Thea’s pantry. The plantUML diagrams show how these inner components work together in the software. The user stories were also interesting to look through since it gives developers insight on how the website is supposed to be used, and they can use that information to improve certain areas of the software.