Sam Bryan

The apprenticeship pattern I decided to choose for this week’s blog was “Read Constantly.” It was somewhat self-explanatory, but I thought it had some good insights nonetheless. It recommended reading books over blogs. I would imagine that this is the right course of action from researching blogs last semester. All the material was good and informative, but many times when the host was interviewing someone, it felt like a summary of what could be a very interesting book. There’s only so much that can be gained from a blog post or a podcast. The things that you learn from those can be valuable, but it is better to go deeper when possible. Even if you have a very wide base of knowledge, it will only get you so far when you only scratch the surface. The quote at the very beginning, from Steve McConnell, says that if you read a good programming book every other month, you will distinguish yourself from your peers. This seems like a worthwhile task, and frankly it is very doable. He cha...

For this weeks blog for the topic Quality Assurance and Testing, I read an article titled “5 Reasons you are wasting your testing time.” That is not to say that testing is a waste of time, but rather as the first sentence says, “Not all our testing time is spent effectively.” The blog goes on to list the five reasons that a programmer might be using their testing time ineffectively, which are as follows: (1) “You don’t set a clear goal for your testing task;” (2) “You don’t understand the value of the feature for your End User;” (3) “You do not keep track of what you tested, your findings and the other ideas you got while testing;” (4) “You do not consult existing information to get insights into your test;” And (5) “You do not do post-test reviews and feedback sessions with your peers.” These are all straightforward ideas, but I’m sure most programmers testing their code have fallen into several of these, if not all. This list provides a framework to avoid these pitfalls. In class...