CS Online Weekly Updates

What went well for me was the ease of accessing the work I needed to do. Once I got credentials to the website I was able to do everything I needed on my own. Along with that, being able to meet with my supervisor was so easy and we always had great communication which made the process so simple. I always knew what she wanted and always took the constructive criticism.  Things I would improve would be to try to incorporate more Computer Science work into it like HTML or CSS, versus just using a website builder, but she and her organization are not literate in HTML/CSS so it makes sense to not use it so they can edit it later on their own.  The most impactful part was being able to do work for an organization that I also support. I support eating plant-based meals to not only further my health, but also the Earth's health. I know there is a lot of environmental impacts that plant-based meals have. I didn't face many challenges, but there was sometimes where I didn't have the...

The top 5 things I learned would be: 1. The agile process. This process is used in many companies to get work done so it is critical I am knowledgable in it.  2. GitHub/Pull Request because working in a team we have to share and collaborate on code, so learning how to merge conflicts and do so together are important.  3. React is a big one because many software engineering positions require react knowledge so having that skill is amazing.  4. Using AWS is important too because thats how majority of things are deployed. By being able to deploy my own projects and other projects makes me more valuable as a software engineer. 5. Lastly, being able to put all those 4 skills together is important. It's easy to be good at deploying on AWS, or one singular item above, but being able to do everything and being a complete programmer is the best thing possible. 

Agile and waterfall are different due to their approach and progress. Agile is flexible and uses shorter cycles to get quick feedback and adjust on the move. The product evolves based on what the team/customer learn. Waterfall is structured to get all the requirements upfront and create detailed plans to move through the design. It is harder to change once the project has begun. Agile lets customer be involved throughout the process, unlike waterfall. 

This week I learned about modern infrastructure and how automation improves server management. It is able to handle failures, restart processes, and manage hardware automatically. I also learned about virtual machines and containers for resource allocation. I also took a quick look at cloud environments and am eager to start learning more next week. 

This week after reading chapter 14 I learned that larger tests like end to end tests are useful but also slow, flaky, and expensive. They need to be used sparingly and NOT as a replacement for unit tests. Large tests are saved for real interactions between systems and validating important user flows, while most behaviors are validated with small, fast, hermetic tests.