For this weeks Blog Post I will discussing the pattern known as “Sustainable Motivations”. The Sustainable Motivation pattern is almost what it sounds like, where you require motivation to keep going. Anyone who knows programming knows that if a programmer is given the chance to do it there way, that is there biggest motivation. The context behind this is that you must develop your technical skills because of this you will find yourself working in a messy reality of specified projects for customers with different demands. The problem that arises is that when working in the real world trenches of projects you will find rigorous, tedious, exhausting, frustrating and constraining effects. The solution to this is that you need to ensure your motivations for craftsmanship will be able to adapt and survive through the Long Road ‘s (pattern) trials. For the most part there will be days and more that you love your job, getting paid to develop software and such. Where the work will just come natural to you without much effort. These days wont be ordinary days, because most programming jobs you will face tedious, vague definitions, and overly complex problems. You could even face some spotty leadership problems, difficult coworker personalities and other troubles. Because of this you may begin to question your commitment to the craft. When faced with these problems its almost imperative that you are aligned with the Long Road. Some examples could include you hating your programming job and are only motivated by the money. Where you value climbing the corporate ladder over honing the skills of your craft. But also are motivated by your reputation as a technologist, allowing you to survive and endure to the sun shines once more in your job. Another example could be you are motivated by your enjoyment of actual programming, where you then come up on a length of time where you cant find the love. But you are motivated by the money, and that programming is financially the best option right now, causing you to be motivated. All of these are good examples of how to be motivated but the best way to figure out yourself is to write down some motivations for you. Keeping this list somewhere safe where you can come upon it when times get tough. This pattern is something 96% of people can relate to, in almost any motivational situation and one I will see myself using down the road.

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

Link to the blog: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/apprenticeship-patterns/9780596806842/ch05s07.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.

I have some very exciting news to share: I have recently accepted a software engineer position to start after graduation! I can’t wait to get started with this company, and I’m counting down the days until my first day there! My final interview involved talking with different members of the engineering team, and there was time allotted throughout the discussions for me to ask my own questions. There was one question that I asked everyone: “What is some advice that you would give a new graduate from a computer science program who is just getting started in the field?” There was one answer that came up the most, which was to not stop being eager to learn new things. This brings me to the apprenticeship pattern for this week, “Expand Your Bandwidth.”

This pattern exactly reflects the advice that I was given during my interview. Expand Your Bandwidth provides context with a possible problem of software developers’ knowledge potentially being focused to the type of work that they take part in on a daily basis. The solution is to simply begin absorbing more new knowledge at a faster, deeper rate. While the developer may find this process to be overwhelming, it is crucial that they can improve their ability to increase the level of learning new concepts and applying them to their own work. This process of expanding bandwidth includes actively seeking out knowledge, possibly through blogs, podcasts, courses, and contact with others who are as passionate about the topic as the apprentice is.

I couldn’t agree more with the suggestions and solutions that this pattern provides. I already have a list of several projects and practice exercises that I hope to complete throughout my career. I am so fortunate that the company that I will be working for seems to be ever-changing with the type of engineering work that is being done. I am confident that I will not run into the problem of work becoming stale or too routine. Nonetheless, I will be sure to continue to keep on taking in new information and building my field knowledge.

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.

In their chapter dedicated to Perceptual Learning, the authors offer some good advice under the apprenticeship pattern “Expand Your Bandwidth”. This pattern stood out to me because the main focus is on improving the learning process itself, not just skill building exercises.

The situation which the authors describe for us is an analogy which says that we as apprentices spend gain our knowledge by “drinking steadily through a straw”, and the fact that “there are seasons in an apprenticeship when one must drink from the fire hose of information”. This spoke to me because the fire hose metaphor is definitely how I feel. While it is important to take your time and learn the necessary development skills to their fullest extent, there are times in which we as apprentices need to open the flood gates of information and learn new skills and technologies as fast as humanly possible.

The reason why this pattern is called “Expand Your Bandwidth” is because that is the solution the authors provide for applying this pattern. They recommend a number of platforms such as a Google blog aggregator, following organizations on Twitter, as well as joining a technical conference whenever possible. I appreciate this advice, because it definitely makes sense to me to utilize the internet as much as possible as a vehicle for exposing us to as much information as possible, allowing us to accelerate our learning.

One important distinction or warning that the authors provide us budding apprentices is to not only know how to improve our volume and velocity of learning but to also know when to turn that off, and begin drinking from the proverbial straw again. While it is integral to be able to learn a vast amount of information efficiently, it is equally important to know when to slow down and focus more deeply on a smaller volume of data, allowing necessary skill development to accelerate as opposed to a broader learning approach.

This pattern definitely made an impression on me, and I will have to start applying that by taking up the authors advice to join a community or forum. Personally, I think I will begin by learning about contemporary industry related statistics provided by popular software development sites like stack overflow, etc.

From the blog CS@Worcester – Bit by Bit by rdentremont58 and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

I decided to read “Sweep The Floor” for this week’s post. This pattern discusses the idea that even if you feel overwhelmed and unable to contribute to your team, there are still ways that you can contribute. This means that even if you can’t tackle the complicated tasks and project straight out of the gate when you start a position, it is still important to be involved and demonstrate that you can deliver quality work in some way, shape, or form.

This is great advice especially for us newly graduating apprentices. When I was at both of my internships, I did plenty of “floor sweeping”. This was anything from writing up documentation, drawing out flow patterns, taking notes during meetings, and writing unit tests. One of the biggest benefits to sweeping the floor when you start a new job, is that you are learning the business logic first, then tackling the complex coding challenges that come with the job as well. For example, this way if your company is working on software that has five different user types and dozens of permissions that require different user types for access, you can learn how this works through writing the documentation and use this knowledge in future tasks for the software. You might even find yourself leading a discussion on the business logic even though you might not have contributed notably on a technical level. From my experience, it made me feel like I was one of the team. I could contribute to conversations, and offer ideas for possible solutions even though I wasn’t entirely comfortable with how to write the code for the particular task.

I also don’t think that this is limited to newly graduating professionals, or even in the world of software development. This line of thinking can be applied to all facets of business, as there are always menial tasks that no one wants to do but offer a learning avenue with a lower risk. When I worked in a hardware store/rental center, I had to learn the software we used as well as how all of our equipment worked. I cleaned the equipment and wrote up requests for customers as a way to learn more about diagnosing machines and giving customers better feedback when they called. Sweeping the floor is good advice both literally and figuratively.

From the blog CS@Worcester – The Road to Software Engineering by Stephen Burke and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

On this Software Development Capstone journey part of my assignment is to choose 10 Individual Apprenticeship Patterns out of 35 patterns among Chapters 2-6 from the book Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsmanby Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. For my eighth individual Apprenticeship pattern I decided to blog about “Nurture Your Passion” pattern.

Summary

When you feel as if you have been hired into a software developer job that is asphyxiating your passion. Sometimes the best solution is to work on some side projects that you find interesting in your work place. If you can not find something interesting at work, then you can dedicate some time on the side building some “Breakable Toys”. Another approach is to ensure that you keep reading great literature in our field that will essentially help carry you through difficult times, such as ones that threatens your passion for the craft. You should also make sure that when joining an organization, that you are joining one with a career path that is related or will lead to your passion. This pattern also suggest us to make sure we “set clear boundaries that define the sort of environment you are willing to work in”. Understand that sometimes you run the risk that the boundaries you set might cause you to “get passed over for pay raises, promotions, kudos, or popularity. But these boundaries are necessary if you are going to break free of hostile conditions and keep your passion strong”.

My Reaction

This pattern helps you understand the importance of doing something you are passionate about. I agree with this idea because it make sense, we need to insure that we are nurturing our passion in order for us to remain happy and passionate about what we do. I found this pattern to be interesting but also useful and thought-provoking. This pattern has definitely changed the way I think about my profession and the way I think, the reason being is that it has made me realize that whatever I do, I should make sure it is something I am passionate about and I am always trying to find ways to keep that passion for the craft alive.

Thank you for your time. This has been YessyMer in the World Of Computer Science, until next time.

From the blog cs@Worcester – YessyMer In the world of Computer Science by yesmercedes and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

The third and final of “patterns grow out of an exposure to new information or a desire to acquire new knowledge: whether you’re practicing a new technique, building something in an effort to learn a new platform, or studying the source code of an innovative new open source tool.”. As this pattern “Breakable Toys”, is also important as 2 last blog posts. “Success is built on failure”, this is a well-known quote. But in the environment that sometimes does not allow for failure, we need to be both or leave some room for failure. We need to learn keep trying after failure, to be the kind of people who can succeed when faced with difficult problems.

Budget for failure by designing are good for side project. We want to have failure in the manage area, they need safe place to make mistake. When implementing the Breakable Toys pattern, make your systems relevant and useful to your life. This is good for our own personal project. In these project, we allowed to fail, we can try out new ideas and techniques. The person who get effect by these failure is us, not to others. The book suggests that a classic example of the use of this pattern build our own wiki. I think this is good idea, this require a lot of components work together: HTTP, REST, parsing, web design, caching, full-text search, databases … we can learn a lot from it. They need maintaining, so there will have thing to do, plus we could keep adding feature. This is great long-term project.

Failure and things go wrong are always happen in the tech industry. The important part is how to fix it and what did we learn from it. It is good for business to know this and leave some room to fall back in, like a backup system or good security team.

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