Blog 10: IDB Project Phase 3
1. What did you do this past week?
This past week my group and I scrambled to get our Phase 2 product submitted. Unfortunately, we had to extend our due date by using tokens, but we eventually got to a point we were satisfied with. While some improvements to Phase 2 may need to be added to the Phase 3 agenda, we are getting started much earlier this time and hope to see better results.
2. What’s in your way?
As of right now, Phase 3 is the only thing in the way of my group. We had struggled to complete Phase 2 on time, but Phase 2 is now behind us and we are focused on making our Phase 3 experience even better.
3. What will you do next week?
Next week, my group and I will continue to work on Phase 3 of our project. We have begun planning what we need to do and hope to begin our implementation next week. One of our foremost goals is staying ahead of schedule so that we can avoid getting stuck in a time crunch as we did this past week.
4. What did you think of Paper 10. Why getter and setter methods are evil?
I thought Paper #10 had a couple of very insightful comments that helped summarize the some essential points to understanding object-oriented programming (OOP). One of the statements that stood out most was “Don’t ask for the information you need to do the work; ask the object that has the information to do the work for you.” I thought this line helped convey the ideas behind OOP in an easy-to-understand way.
5. What was your experience of functions, regular expressions. and relational algebra?
I have had a little bit of regular expression experience in my Compilers class, so the topic was not entirely new to me. While regular expressions are very useful, it seems like they can get complicated very fast and I want to practice some more with them before I can say that I am comfortable with the topic.
6. What made you happy this week?
This week, I was fortunate enough to attend a cousin’s wedding. Besides having great food, I really enjoyed having family together. The wedding also had more of an outdoor and relaxed setting, which made for a very fun environment.
7. What’s your pick-of-the-week?
This article by Sumeet Wadhwani highlights a report by an IT service provider, Commit, where they expect software development outsourcing by startup companies to increase drastically in 2023. One of the primary issues that startup companies are having is reducing the length of time required to hire a qualified software engineer. The industry average from application to offer is currently 7.5 weeks. This is essentially 2 months of time that a company is required to move at a slow pace, if at all, until their new employee is onboarded. Other issues include time differences between employees and many people now wanting to work remotely. Commit has observed the trend where startups prefer to use a “middle-man” agency to connect them with the talent required to complete a job. Should this trend continue, we could see an increase in the number of freelance software developer consultants who transition between companies after a task is completed rather than whenever they receive a better offer.
