This week marks the end of CST 438, and a short, yet intense learning experience about software engineering. Although the work load was tough at times, and especially during unprecedented events happening in the world at the same time, I feel proud of myself for making it this far.
I learned a lot of useful things in this class that will definitely help me out in my current job working as software test, and in any other future jobs/careers I might pursue in software. Five things I considered the most important are:
1. Always create requirements that are clear and concise, along with getting all stakeholders to agree on these requirements. This allows for efficient development and realistic goals when making an application, and also wastes less time and resources if conflicts arise over what requirements are/aren't wanted, or in the worst case having to change requirements and lose time by starting over on certain aspects of the project.
2. Microservices are powerful, modular tools, but they're not always the best solution for an application. Starting an application as a monolith creates less overhead and is easier to manage, and also gives a development team more time to understand the application and increase their technical skills. Switching over to microservices should only happen once there is a clear need for them, such as an application requiring to scale beyond what its original monolith design can do.
3. Writing good test cases saves debugging time and chasing down pesky bugs that could've been avoided, freeing up precious development time.
4. Code reviews are an important tool for developers to focus on their "weak points" in technical skill, and are useful for development teams as well for learning good coding practices.
5. Using a centralized version control system such as Git is essential for any kind of software development project, even solo projects. At the minimum, a VCS system prevents data loss by saving snapshots of code repositories, but its real strengths lie in allowing teams to easily collaborate on software through development branches and pull requests (along with integrating code reviews!).
I learned a lot of useful things in this class that will definitely help me out in my current job working as software test, and in any other future jobs/careers I might pursue in software. Five things I considered the most important are:
1. Always create requirements that are clear and concise, along with getting all stakeholders to agree on these requirements. This allows for efficient development and realistic goals when making an application, and also wastes less time and resources if conflicts arise over what requirements are/aren't wanted, or in the worst case having to change requirements and lose time by starting over on certain aspects of the project.
2. Microservices are powerful, modular tools, but they're not always the best solution for an application. Starting an application as a monolith creates less overhead and is easier to manage, and also gives a development team more time to understand the application and increase their technical skills. Switching over to microservices should only happen once there is a clear need for them, such as an application requiring to scale beyond what its original monolith design can do.
3. Writing good test cases saves debugging time and chasing down pesky bugs that could've been avoided, freeing up precious development time.
4. Code reviews are an important tool for developers to focus on their "weak points" in technical skill, and are useful for development teams as well for learning good coding practices.
5. Using a centralized version control system such as Git is essential for any kind of software development project, even solo projects. At the minimum, a VCS system prevents data loss by saving snapshots of code repositories, but its real strengths lie in allowing teams to easily collaborate on software through development branches and pull requests (along with integrating code reviews!).
Comments
Post a Comment