Month: October 2019

Work Day 17: Back to School!

…but all the other kids are WAY ahead of me.

Our first continuing ed session with our instructor was abbreviated. He’s having computer issues, so we mainly walked high-level through the object-oriented JavaScript code he’s got out in GitHub. We’re supposed to review this, and try to run it on our machines before our next session—later on, we’ll be doing more involved work, I’m sure. It looks like I’m going to have to get Node.js loaded onto my work laptop, as we’ll be using that. I’m not sure how well that’s going to interact with the rest of the apps on my computer. I think I’m going to ask my mentor and The Alum for their thoughts. I could possibly just do all the continuing ed work on my home laptop to be on the safe side…I’m going to load a copy of his GitHub code there anyway.

We also spent a good deal of time going over how we all are doing in our new jobs. Some people are doing very well, as either a) they don’t need Java, and/or b) they have people they can shadow. I’m at a standstill, as I’m still learning Java and Gosu, which is going GLACIALLY slowly. Honestly, I’m getting the most bang for my buck from the Udemy course at home, but it’s not very fast-paced. Some people in class have had good success using the online CodeAcademy site. I’m tempted to check it out, but realistically, between Udemy, Tutorialspoint, Pluralsight (zzzz…), studying our current code, and trying to learn Gosu (and somewhere in here I have to learn Spring Batch), I think I have enough going on. If I try to add one more learning tool, I’m pretty sure my head is going to explode.

This afternoon, a good friend pointed out that I should give myself a break. If nothing else, I’ve only had a decent work laptop on which to do ANYTHING for a short time now.

I hate feeling useless, though.

Work Day 16: I DID want something to do…

As I had yesterday off, my day count is now odd…

I had a horrendous dream last night that we had to PAY for our continuing ed with our Code Academy instructor. We had to go on a communal computer to do it, and the mouse turned into a REAL mouse…the tiny squeaky kind with little whiskers. I’m probably dreaming this because our first continuing ed session is tomorrow morning. Sadly, our instructor is not going to cover Java (which half of us need), but he’s promised to cover object-oriented programming principles, which can be applied to our Java self-learning. I’m really hoping it will help, as I’m still somewhat confused about it.

The good news is that I actually did some real work today. Our agile team was flipped a defect. Sometime between the last release and the upcoming one, our system now lets one put in an amount WAY over the amount one should. To preserve confidentiality, I won’t say what or where this is in the system—suffice it to say, it’s a big honking problem. While I didn’t solve the issue (no one has, yet), I did manage to figure out where to look in the code, and how to connect and trace everything back—just the thing I didn’t think I’d ever figure out. I managed to slam up against the java APIs, which are sort of a black box to me (from asking around, I get the impression that they are black boxes to a lot of people). The next thing we’ve been investigating is to see what changed between the two releases. Seeing as SEVERAL different groups have user stories in any given release, and there are several different repos for our systems, this isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Doing the continuing ed tomorrow is probably going to be a walk in the park, in comparison…

Work Day 15: Is anyone HERE???

Friday was very quiet at work. Everyone was either working from home or taking a day off. When I came back to work from Code Academy, I decided to not work from home for a while, as I wanted to be in the office to be able to consult with my coworkers and mentor in person if I needed help. Honestly, though, on a Friday, that’s completely useless. I’m tempted to go back to my old schedule.

I spent the day diving into Gosu, Pluralsight (fell asleep again) and Tutorialspoint. I swear, Tutorialspoint is the best find ever! They have exercises you can do. I figured out that some classes are repeats, so instead of blindly doing each exercise as a stand-alone, I’ve been combining exercises in the class referenced. It’s a bit harder, but it’s giving me more of an understanding of the process.

For Gosu, I managed to get rid of the multiple versions of Scratchpad, and use it successfully—I discovered that the Gosu Reference document, in its 400+ pages, has exercises you can do in the scratchpad. I also found another online Gosu reference: http://gosu-lang.github.io They also have an online scratchpad/“play” area where you can practice coding: http://gosu-lang.github.io/play.html

I have a ghastly busy weekend afoot, but I’m taking Monday off, so I’m planning to plow through more of the Udemy course. I’d try to do the Udemy course at work, but I have my home computer set up for it with a higher version of Java—I’d probably have to schlep the home laptop in, in addition to my huge new laptop. And then I’d need to go see a chiropractor…

Speaking of my unspeakably busy weekend, I got the baby sweater done! I just have to scan it for kitty fur and wrap it up for the shower today. I’d wash it, but it’s too late for that—I’m going to instruct the prospective mother to do so before she has her little tyke wear it. It came out nicely, if I do say so myself!

Work Day 14: A little help from my friends…

Another day of wading through more tutorials and documentation. The Gosu Reference Guide, at over 400 pages, is the War & Peace of software documentation. I did find examples that one can try out in the Gosu Scratchpad, which I’m going to try tomorrow. I do need to figure out how I ended up with FIVE copies of scratchpad in Guidewire Studio, and how to get rid of them.

I grilled more people on where the devil documentation is for how the Gosu jobs hang together and which are used for what, but every SINGLE person I quizzed, including developers I greatly respect, all had the same answer — there is none. One just has to “figure it out.”

I may have to start writing some documentation, if for no other reason than to preserve my own sanity.

In the meantime, after said respected developers gave me their two cents, they did help me out. One went over our GitHub Wiki with me, and even encouraged me to submit corrections for the wiki concerning the developer setup (after struggling through the process a few days ago, and figuring out certain things the hard way, I had a few suggestions). Another sent me links for further documentation on our Spring Batch process. He even sat down with me and showed me how to set up Eclipse. The Spring Batch Integration jobs are actually set up with a bit more rhyme and reason as to what they are and which integration system they’re tied to, so I’m hoping those might be easier to understand…

The best part was that he me introduced to Tutorialspoint. He showed me the tutorial they have for Spring Batch, but I also found their one for Java! https://www.tutorialspoint.com/java/index.htm. I started reading through it and it has exercises. I managed to do the first few.

One day I hope to eventually code real stuff…Mr. GitHub Wiki assured me that “No one is going to let you code yet.” Apparently, the idea is that once I have a better understanding of Java and Gosu, then I’ll most likely pair-program or shadow someone at first, or perhaps do a small user story.

I suppose it’s only fair, seeing as I’ve (according to HR) only been on the job 7 business days…

Work Day 13: I need to be cloned…

The good news is that I finally got the docking station. It’s an odd-looking little cube, like something out of Star Trek. The first one they brought up wasn’t the right kind. We (I’m using the royal we here…I had no clue) figured this out when I looked down and realized that my laptop was on battery power, and draining. The tech support guy came back up with the little cube, which is working like a charm. I’m still fiddling with where I want to put my two monitors and laptop. I’m aiming for that three-screen configuration, but I can’t decide if I want the open laptop in the center or to the side. I know…ludicrous first-world problems…

The bad news is that I’m still trying to fit everything into my now-bustling life.

I have TWO events over the weekend, one of which I’d love to jettison, but I’d feel guilty doing so. I’m still trying to get through my tutorials and my Udemy course (which, honestly, I’m getting much more out of than the tutorials, because they give you exercises to do). On top of everything else, I’m trying to finish the little sweater for my great-niece Maddie’s shower on Sunday. I’m on the final sleeve. It’s a baby sweater—you’d think I’d blow right through it, but the pattern is an 8-row repeat, so it’s slow going.

I’m still scratching my head over our instructor saying that he always has home coding projects going. I honestly have no idea where I’m ever going to find the time for a home project. I may have to skip that for now, seeing as a lot of my spare time is being sucked up trying to learn Java. I’m also still trying to look at our user stories to figure out how they were done and what jobs were used, so that I can possibly find some rhyme or reason to it all. My mentor confirmed today that there is NO documentation denoting which jobs go with which parts of the app. Also, there are hardly any comments in the code to give you any clue.

And don’t get me started on the README files…

Work Day 12: There really is an app for that!

Today I actually fired up Guidewire Studio. It was an elusive app, buried somewhere down in the bowels of my applications—oddly, it’s an application with no desktop icon. With my mentor and The Alum’s help I finally figured out how to set up everything correctly. It involved Environment Variable manipulation and server setting adjustments (fun fact: always best to denote the port you want), but I finally typed “gwb studio” in the command prompt and THE APP LAUNCHED! At last! The server was a bit more of a problem, due to errors in compiling—I was missing some more settings. Once that was fixed, the server fired up.

The Alum kindly spend a good chunk of time with me this afternoon, showing me all the settings within the application and how to launch the local front end (and how to connect a database so I had some data). The really cool thing was when she showed me how to click CTRL-ALT-E from the front end to bring up the code and wireframes. I’m still fuzzy on what the code all does (still wading through the tutorials), but at least I can find it in relation to the front end location affected.

I asked if there was any documentation for how all the code is connected and what relates to what, but there really isn’t any. The Alum said they mainly know which jobs to change for enhancements by tracing back the code, determining which jobs and data feed the job they’re looking at. We have wads of requirements documents (as a former BA, I know this only too well), production support documentation, data mapping documents, etc. However, nothing that shows how the many, many, many (I can’t stress “many” too many times) jobs relate and work together. It seems odd. Even my rinky-dink one-department Easytrieve Plus operation back in 1992 had documentation on which jobs called which jobs and what data fed each. There has to be something SOMEWHERE explaining all this.

On a more cheery note, I finally have all my vacation time back!

Now I just need a damned docking station…

Work Day 11: Bureaucracy Redux

We have new and improved bureaucracy today…this time, HR bureaucracy! HR, as in Human Resources, or as my spouse calls it, “Inhumane Resources.”

I know one can argue that I just spent three months having an awesome coding vacation, during which time I barely knew what was going on with the rest of the world. However, believe it or not, I actually do need to take REAL vacation days before the end of the year. I’m one of those old company fossils who has over five weeks of vacation time a year—six, if you want to count the inevitable one week I carry over every damn year due to not being able to take the time because of some project or other that just HAS to get done (not that I’m resentful…). I’ve accepted the fact that I’m going to lose a few weeks this year, due to Code Academy, but I did want to use some of my time. Today, I put in for all the vacation days I’d like to take, concentrating on time periods where they aren’t going to miss me (granted, they aren’t getting much out of me right now, anyway, so I’m not sure what my point is).

Anyway, my manager approved my deluge of requests until the point where my vacation day balance suddenly went into the NEGATIVE. He showed in his system that I only have 11.60 hours of vacation time left. I showed in my year-to-date report that I have 225.20 hours left (and before you ask, I have NO idea where the .60 or .20 come from…).

So, I called HR. You’d think this would be a simple matter, easily cleared up—oh, you would be SO wrong. They have this massively confusing voice menu from hell. I chose the wrong option and ended up being transferred to THREE different departments, including our main company number, where the switchboard operator was under the impression that I was a former employee. I finally got to the actual HR department I needed…and was promptly put on hold.

After 45 minutes of my life that I’m never getting back again, the long and the short of it is that, due to my job change, the system somehow hosed all my available vacation time, save for 11.60 hours, which was “accrued.” Accrued from WHERE, I don’t know, seeing as I’ve only officially been on the new job since 10/16/2019.

It don’ git no better’n dis…

We hope this will be rectified by the holidays, so that I can get more that ONE day off for Christmas.

Work Day 10: No matter what job you have…

There’s no escaping bureaucracy.

In the continuing saga of getting up to speed, I found out that, yes, I was completely correct about the git config command I need to enter to accomodate large file names. However…I can’t do any config commands because I don’t have admin rights to my laptop. I went onto our tech support site to put in a ticket for this, and found out that my laptop is STILL under the name of the tech who built it. The guy who deployed it has no idea why it would still be in the build guy’s name. He suggested I wait until Monday and try again, when perhaps the system will have caught up and actually show that I am the user of MY OWN LAPTOP. Also, my manager is out until Monday, and I really didn’t want to explain to his Friday stand-in why I’m requesting admin rights to a laptop that, apparently, is not under my name.

Oh, and I’m also waiting for the docking station. The deployment guy ordered it and is waiting for it to come in. This means I’m still using the laptop without the dual work monitors, which can be tricky when one is doing things where two screens are much easier.

I’ve managed to make it through the w3schools site and SoloLearn for Java. I’m still wading through the Pluralsight videos. I’m liking the Udemy class, but I’m having a bit of a challenge trying to find time in my (now) busy personal life to fit this in. I’m pondering letting some things go that really don’t apply anymore. I really want to be successful as a developer, and I’m not going to be able to do that if I have to deal with other things in my life that keep me from learning what I need to or from doing my coding practice. Unfortunately, people just see that I’m out of formal training now and that I should be available for anything.

I am, of course, ALWAYS available for knitting and crocheting!

Work Day 9: We have laptop!!!

I’m happy to report that today I dropped off my large doorstop of a laptop and picked up…another heavy laptop. I didn’t put it together at the time, but as I’m now a developer, I’m not getting the cute little tiny laptop everyone else has. This is a large, industrial-strength machine. I take back everything I’ve ever said about waiting entirely too long to get a new laptop…this thing is SMOKIN’—definitely worth the wait. I got an HP Zbook 15 G3 and it’s awesome! I can’t tell you how fantastic it is to turn on a machine, and IT COMES ON. No waiting 10 minutes for the damn thing just to get to the CTRL-ALT-DELETE screen. It’s fast, has Windows 10 (my old machine was still on Windows 7) and twice as much RAM as my last machine.

Speaking of my last machine, you know your computer is over the hill when the tech guy takes one look at it , gapes slack-jawed, and says, “Oh my God!” Then, when he finds his composure again, says, “I thought we got rid of those things YEARS ago.”

Now I just need to figure out what the hell I’m doing. I managed to get all my settings done (Jack is looking attractive as my wallpaper, and I picked out a nice afghan picture for my locked-screen image).

Then, I needed to set up Guidewire. Following the procedures, I managed to set up the directory, and zip up and wipe out the configuration file. Then I attempted to clone our repository to repopulate the configuration file with our code.

Hilarity ensued.

The good news is that I do have access to clone a repo. The bad news is that I got some GHASTLY error saying there were file names that were too long—six files. I did check and indeed the repo does have some big-ass long names. However, these files are 2 years old. Surely this has been an issue before now??? I googled and found that these is a git config command you can enter to address this:

git config –system core.longpaths true

but I’m going to check with people tomorrow to see if there isn’t already some sort of fix they already do that I may have missed.

All things considered…this is still more fun than being a BA.

Work Day 8: Almost…

Okay, I may have spoken too soon…There’s been a slight snag in the procurement of my new laptop. The tech support guy planned to copy over the data from my old hunk of junk to my new laptop. I have most things on my personal drive on the network, but I do have some things on my laptop for immediate use (in the event that something goes awry with network access). This was supposed to take no time at all, but the transfer failed. Come to find out, I was supposed to be signed out of Outlook. Sure…a corporate worker not on email for ANY length of time… HAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!!

After I finished laughing hysterically, we arranged for him to give this another shot tomorrow morning. I’m going down to the tech area, so that if he needs to physically access my laptop to do this, he can.

In the meantime, staring at videos isn’t cutting it for me, nor is typing along to said videos. I’ve already gone through the w3schools exercises, and I’m almost through SoloLearn–the object/class thing isn’t really sinking in yet. SO…I found a course out on Udemy.com for programming with Java and Eclipse. As a first time Udemy subscriber, I got this at a steal. I’m going to go through this on my home laptop–It took a good hour, but I finally got Java installed. I had a slight issue in that I needed to add the path to the Environment Variables, but once I did that, the application worked fine. This course has a series of exercises, which I think will be more beneficial for me. I figure between this and https://codingbat.com/java I should have this down eventually.

I truly hope to do SOMETHING to justify my paycheck soon. Otherwise, my coworkers are going to start mistaking me for a houseplant and try to water me…