This week I had some problems that threw me off a bit. So I didn't submit anything really. I did learn a lot from the reading and videos though. From those I can tell that big waterfall style software projects are not really my interest. Listing out how everything is going to work seems like a job for a different personality type than mine. What I like to do is lay out close targets for what can be done and then figure out where to go from there.
An example would be writing a piece of software to test an electronic device. Instead of getting all worked up planning the test software my first order of business is going to be making sure that I can control the instruments needed to interact with the device. This would result in needing to get GPIB and ethernet control of the devices working. With that doorway open I'd move ahead and lay out a few more close targets to hit until I reached my goal.
I can see the case for using things like UML diagrams though. Instead of using them in a waterfall process it would be nice to share them as google diagrams and update them as the project goes on. We will do that in week 4 I believe as we ramp up our team project. Normally I just try to keep these kinds of diagrams in my head as I work on a software project. Laying them out on paper seems like a good way to keep everybody on the same page though as we collaborate in a group format.
The emphasis on test was also interesting this week since I have worked in manufacturing test for a while. Having a test for just about every single piece of your program really seems to make sense but I haven't worked like that before. It reminds me of working on a poorly documented electrical cabinet for a test system. When I was first deployed to work on this large cabinet I wasn't sure where to start. Then someone told me "just trace every wire" and I thought they were joking. Sure enough, I went ahead and spent weeks tracing every wire to every electrical component and documenting it on a new schematic. This seems a bit like the test route where we should really have tests written for all of our code. At first my reaction is "really, every piece??" but it makes sense. The availability of automated test suites that can run through your tests makes it appear that this would actually pay a good dividend in the end. So long term I would like to follow along with this and figure out what the proper automated test route is for a given software development environment, Java or otherwise.
So this week I lagged due to some personal problems and I might fail but that's OK with me. The important thing is to just keep at it and learning new skills. Every repeated class gives me even more time spent reading and solving problems. I don't mind being a bit slow or scattered as far as my thinking goes as long as I can build interesting things.
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