Week Thirteen: 11/22/20
Thirteen weeks in and I must say that this class has been quite the uphill battle. I’ve been in the trenches week after week, with little semblance of time besides the undeniable progress written into the code. I threw myself into the thick of it, learning new material and grinding through the group project. Oftentimes my team came across requirements that were alien to us, but every hurdle has been bested. I mean, it’s hard to believe that no one knew what the React framework was at the beginning of the semester. Now frankly I can’t live without React for my frontend needs. Thanksgiving will be upon us soon and since I’ll likely not post anything next week, I’ll give my thanks here. I’m thankful that I can finally count the number of remaining assignments with the fingers on one hand. I’m so proud of the work that my team has been able to accomplish and thankful for the amount of experience that sticking my head in uncertain situations (see: frontend team) has accrued. Of course, I’m also thankful for Dr. Downing and how his years and years of experience teaching software engineering translated well in an online classroom setting. I know that I should be saving my reflection for the final week, but this is my blog, my rules. Anyway, enough yapping and getting sentimental. Let’s just jump into it.
What did you do this past week?
For the past week, I developed visualizations for my group’s data and my provider group’s data. We used Recharts and D3. Today the whole frontend crew is going to comb through the codebase and ensure that it is all up to snuff. But really, all things considered, most of the work is complete for Phase IV. My team just needs to prepare the video.
What’s in your way?
We are entering what I like to call — cue dramatic music — the finals sprint. No ifs, ands, or buts. You know it’s true; I know it’s true. There’s nothing else to do but to put your nose to the grindstone for the upcoming weeks, until your last project/final is submitted.
What will you do next week?
Because none of my classes this semester hold any finals, it seems as if my instructors have all placed their project deadlines around December 3. For this class, thankfully I’ve only got the one exam on December 3 & 4. For my virtualization class, I’ve got presentations about our open-source project contributions, which is in progress, between December 1 and 10, with our report due on December 12. For my neural networks class, my team hasn’t started the final project, and the presentations occur on December 2 & 4, with the results being due on December 6. I have some upcoming quizzes and minor assignments too, but those are peanuts. And yeah, I also take some non-CS classes as well.
If you read it, what did you think of What Happens to Us Does Not Happen to Most of You?
I have not read it.
What was your experience of refactoring?
Refactoring is important. I was already aware of code refactoring and the reasoning behind the process, at least in concept, because in my experience I have often been concerned about writing code for my programs that is both elegant in design and easy for people to understand. One crucial element about refactoring, which I learned this past week in class, is utilizing one’s acceptance unit tests to ensure that the external function remains the same. Because of this, creating strong acceptance tests is critical to the success of refactoring.
What made you happy this week?
As of my writing this, my brother is currently on his way back from university for the rest of the year, and this is the first time in months I’ll be able to hang out with him in person. I’m preemptively happy for the event. Also, since I talked about many of the things I’m thankful for at the start of this post, I’ll just mention that I listened through Abbey Road again. What a beautiful and brilliant album brimming with humanity. Hell, even “Her Majesty” is a gem. If mankind were to shoot an audio recording out into space for future intergalactic travelers to discover, nothing would conjure awe from its evocation of human emotion more effectively than this. It’s not just the culmination of the best work from every Beatle (John’s I Want You; George’s Here Comes the Sun; Paul’s medley; and yes, even Ringo’s Octopus’s Garden) but the climax of Western pop culture.
What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?
I recently read this article that describes the threat of malicious botnets scanning the internet for unsecured ENV files. Once they identify ENV files, these threat actors download the files, extract sensitive credentials, and breach a company’s backend infrastructure.
I found this very insightful personally, because my team is keeping its Google Maps API key inside an ENV file in our public GitLab repository. As a result of this, we have restricted the key access such that it can only be used for the Google Maps API and it will only work from the website’s domain. My tip this week is to check whether the keys in your ENV files are secured or not.
According to security firm Greynoise, there have been more than 2,800 different IP addresses used to scan for ENV files over the past three years, with more than 1,110 scanners being active over the past month. The firm has a cool visualization of this information here.
If you’re interested in the topic, feel free to read the article here.
And that’s that. I still have one more post after this one, the final week’s. Can I get a “poggers” in chat? I hope to see you all then. Cheerio!
