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Week 6 - 26/10/2020 to 30/10/2020
Overview
- Time Boxing
- Communication Skills
- JHipster
- Spring
- Technical Writting
- Java
Time Boxing
Time Boxing is a technique of defining an specific ammount of time to a certain task in advance. This is really helpful to get the most out of your time and increase your productivity. IMO it works because you don’t waste time focusing on the details, you go straight to the main problem and worry about the details later. I think this technique applies what is called the Paretto rule. Most times you can do the 80% of the work in 20% of the time, but only if you prioritize right. And I think Time Boxing really helps you in that aspect. Also it’s perfect to combine this technique with the Pomodoro one that I already applied.
Communication Skills
There are 2 main points in this.
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Ask better questions: This is really simple. This is simple, and it goes like this. Do the research » Wonder what your menthor would tell you if you were in that scenario » If it’s still unsolved, then ask. Of course there are finer details, like how much time you should research before asking. But I think it’s a good general rule and it would all depend on the availability of your menthors.
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Always be present: I heard this several time in the academy, but to be honest this week I really saw the importance of this. I had the chance to attend a communication class and it put me on perspective on what people can see when you lack communication. Even when you’re not saying something, you’re transmiting a message of who you are.
JHipster
This week I learned a little about JHipster. It’s a really powerful tool that literally generates the frontend and backend of the app. It gives you some choices to choose from and generates the boilerplate code. I think for this particular project it was a good choice because of time issues. But generally I’m not sure I would recommend it, specially to a team of new developers. I’m not saying that I don’t like it, but the thins is that there’s a lot of files and code that I don’t understand and it can be a little overwhelming to get the hang of it. Of course you really don’t need to know how everything works to get started.
Spring and Java
This week I learned a lot of things, both about Spring and Java. I’ll make a list of concepts:
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@ -> Annotation. Is a form of metadata. They affect the way our program behaves using tools and libraries.
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@Service -> Service Components are the class file which contains @Service annotation. These class files are used to write business logic in a different layer, separated from @RestController class file.
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@GetMapping -> This annotation helps us to define the API endpoint and declare it’s an HTTP GET method.
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JPA Repositories -> it’s what we use to map objects to relational databases.
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DTO -> Data transfer objects. Puts together data from multiple tables to bring it back to the frontend.
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Database Transaction -> A transaction generally represents any change in a database.
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@Transactional -> Automatically manages the transaction, so we just have to worry about the business logic.
Technical Writing
This one of my favorit things to learn this week. Mostly because I feel that It’s a skill that I really didn’t know that I needed. Technical Writing is helpful for things like creating documentation for a project or publishing an article about science/engineering. Here are my main takeaways:
- Active voice > Passive voice
- Choose accurate verbs for your sentences
- “There is” and “There are” usually can be substituted to improve the sentence
- 1 sentence = 1 idea
- Lists are very helpful when you have several groupable items
- Avoid filler words