The class that I am currently taking is CS-448. It mainly hands on experience with a project that is been out and we as students are using our programming skills to achieve an esteemed system. New programming tools and skills are introduced and I am excited to share along my learning through the blogs.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Tech a Talk -Arisha Khan by ajahan22 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
For my CS capstone’s setup task 5, I have decided to write about my thoughts on the Principles of the Agile Manifesto linked to in the values section of the about page for LibreFoodPantry. Like the name suggests, the Agile Manifesto keeps you on your toes. Developers must be ready and able to respond to any necessary changes that may arise. The manifesto also requires regular communication. I really like how the principles of the manifesto promote living, evolving projects that adapt to situations as needed. I can see how following these principles will greatly assist in project development and achieving all the project goals. I look forward to adopting these principles and experiencing a project that abides by them.
From the blog CS@Worcester – D’s Comp Sci Blog by dlivengood and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
Upon reading the Libre Food Pantry landing page I was very pleased with the vision and mission sections, as they express the better angels of a computer scientist’s nature. Often times, I get very discouraged by the field as it seems like while many people may just not care, so many more simply want to create and solve problems – but these creations are used to exploit other workers, or invade people’s privacy. “Big Tech”, like all things under capital, takes the creative energy of its workers and uses it to enrich itself at the cost of human dignity, and oftentimes, lives. In a just society, we would value much more the contributions of these open source contributors than the efforts made to perpetuate war and mass surveillance.
…or at least that what I would say BUT if I decided to go to any other tab from the overview and then back, the contents wouldn’t load correctly. Rest assured I will be supporting a bug report.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Press Here for Worms by wurmpress and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
Looking at the FOSSism link, one FOSSism I related to and liked was FOSSism #2: Be productively lost. Being that the project is open sourced, joining in may be confusing because you may not know what is going on at the time or what the scope is for development. I can relate to this being a CS major. Sometimes learning new things can be quite confusing especially when you start using code that is pre written and has framework available for you to utilize. While that can be convenient it can be bothersome if you don’t yet understand how that code works and perhaps you have different ideas on accomplishing the same thing. This FOSSism is all about embracing that confusion and worry, the open source environment invites new user and it a friendly environment to ask and learn from others.
From the blog cs@worcester – Zac's Blog by zloureiro and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
Of the items linked to on the librefoodpantry.org home page, I found the section on Issue Trackers on the Communication page to be the most interesting. The LibreFoodPantry project allows developers to communicate with each other using the GitLab’s issue tracker. Developers can report bugs, request new features, and ask questions by creating a new issue either within a specific project or in the community section. This will notify other developers and allow them to communicate with each other to find a solution to the issue. I have never used this feature of GitLab, and I think it seems like a fantastic resource as it allows developers to collaborate with each other to find solutions to issues and make new plans. I chose to write about it because I think it could be useful for my classmates and I to use if we come across issues while working on the project.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Computer Science with Kyle Q by kylequad and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
The LibreFoodPantry website has a description of the project and is professional, complete with a vision, mission, values, and license.
The most useful and interesting link on the website is the Principles behind the Agile Manifesto. This is clearly the work of software developers who were fed up with time-consuming processes and being locked in to a specific process or tool.
Working software is the primary measure of progress.
Principles behind the Agile Manifesto
Change is inevitable in software, and the most important thing is that it works. That is important to remember going into this field, and I hope writing about it solidifies the concept. It is tempting to set a plan and stick to it, as one does in most contexts.
This semester I am lucky to work with “motivated individuals” and hope to create great work with a “self-organizing team”.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Inquiries and Queries by James Young and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
I am finally in my last semester of my Computer Science degree, Spring 2020. CS-448 is our Software Development Capstone, in which we will be developing an open source project for LibreFoodPantry.
I’m very excited for this project. It will be real development experience with a close team, gaining hands-on experience in Agile. Contributing to an open source project is good experience as well, and it will be for a good cause.
I get a warm, fuzzy feeling knowing that seniors who are itching to graduate will be struggling with our legacy code for years to come. Here’s to minimizing the damage.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Inquiries and Queries by James Young and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
For my Software Development Capstone, my class is working in tandem with students from other schools to contribute to the LibreFoodPantry open source project. I honestly can’t contain my excitement to get started on this project as it is my first real exposure to programming on a team and using all of the knowledge I have about Agile and Scrum to develop software. I hope that my team and I can successfully collaborate to make meaningful contributions to the project we are working on.
We are going to be developing software to aid our school’s food pantry, and because it is open source, hopefully aid many other food pantries. While reading the information on the librefoodpantry community website I found most interesting the values presented on the site. The list of FOSSisms, that is linked was a very interesting read and helped eased my stress about working on an open source project. In creating open source software we are engaged and joining a community of developers working towards a common goal. Not only that, but we have the ability to work on a project whose scope is larger than any one person could comprehend, forcing us to work as a team in order to make headway on the project. It is a public codebase which forces us to show craftsmanship in order to maintain readability and professionalism.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Your Friendly Neighborhood Programming Blog by John Pacheco and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
This feed will contain blogs for my aforementioned Software Dev Capstone course, as it did for the courses I have taken previously. I’m excited to share my experiences in class as well as reflections on the reading materials this spring semester.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Press Here for Worms by wurmpress and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.
After reviewing the various links posted on the main LibreFoodPantry website I think the most interesting item to me was the “What’s New” page. I really like the concept of this page and as someone who has been following the project for the past couple of months primarily through Discord notifications, I think it is extremely useful to have a page on the main website that highlights important changes in plain text versus a bot posting GitLab events through Discord. I am a bit surprised there isn’t more on this page yet, given the many new changes to the organization of projects I saw yesterday in the first CS-448 class. I also wonder how this page is different from the announcements channel in the Discord server.
From the blog CS@Worcester – Chris' Computer Science Blog by cradkowski and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.