Month: November 2019

Work Day 24: I think I can…I think I can…

Well, Friday I managed to complete what I can for unit testing with the local machine data I have. The good news is that I had data for two lines of business that are very different, so it was a good test. Now I just have to figure out if I need to do a GUnit test for this, too, and when I’ll need to have a code review done. I’m going to have to wait for the January branch to open up before I add my changes officially. I swear, trying to figure out all this procedural stuff is WAY more complicated than the actual change was! My mentor is going to be back Monday, so I can bend his ear then. I’ve been looking at the backlog again, and I think I’ve pinpointed another story that’s similar to this one that I might be able to pull off…

Also, our continuing ed sessions with our instructor begin in earnest on Wednesday. I’m going to have to go over the repo we’ll be using.

It’s a beautiful thing…I don’t dread Mondays anymore!

On a crafting note, in addition to the new sweater project, I’ve lost my mind and joined the Annie’s Attic “Striped Crochet Afghan Club.” You receive enough yarn and a pattern each month to crochet three stripes of an afghan. At the end of the year, you end up with the final product. I’m thinking this will make a nice present for someone. It’s not taking me terribly long to do these…I’m tempted to search my stash for some spare yarn, so that I can have two of these projects going simultaneously.

Of course, I might want to see how much homework I’ll be getting on Wednesday before I decide anything…

Work Day 23: Holy Cow…It WORKS!

This morning, after peering at files, searching for fo:table-layout=“auto”, tracing through all our code to see how a PDF export is triggered, scouring for ANY reference to Apache FOP (fun fact: FOP stands for Formatting Objects Processor) errors, I did a Google search on the specific error again and hit upon a reference about the columns widths needing to be specified. I check the two grids and THAT WAS THE DIFFERENCE. The grid that worked for the PDF export had column widths specified. The other grid had some specified, but not all. Once I added column widths and wrapLabel=“true” the PDF generated!

Now I just have to figure out how to unit-test. I did one test for one type of business and everything worked out perfectly. I’m having a devil of a time trying to test other business types due to the test data on my local machine being LAME. No other business type appears to have fully-fleshed-out claims with reserves and payment transactions to test for my change. If I could figure out how to query the db files for my local machine, I could get a better idea of what data is actually available.

The Alum suggested perhaps creating a “patch” for my coding changes, and then trying to figure out how to connect to one of the lower environments, employing my patch. I was confused back at “patch,” never mind the rest of that sentence.

And don’t even MENTION that dreaded “GUnit” test…

On a non-coding note, I’ve begun casting on for my new sweater! I still have to wash and block the sheep sweater I’ve been working on all summer. It’s probably going to be next Spring before I finish the new sweater, but at least it will be a nice, easy project to do during my continuing coding education saga.

Work Day 22: Day 2 of the “simple” story…

The next time I say that a user story is easy and a slam-dunk, someone tell me to shut up…

I’ve managed to get everything to work except for the PDF export for one of the grids. Weirdly, the seemingly wider PDF export is fine. The shorter one is still throwing a damn Apache FOP error. I had the Alum help me for two hours, and neither of us could make a dent in the issue. We even tried getting rid of a field, and even THAT didn’t work. I did google the error, and there are some suggestions online on how to deal with similar issues. However, I can’t figure out WHERE you’d plug in the code. I could just post my issue on one of the sites. My mentor is out until next Monday, or I would have asked him.

Thankfully, this user story is slated for the January release, so I still have plenty of time to figure it out.

Also, not to be too Pollyanna, but the other good news is that, in the process, the Alum showed me a lot of tricks to using Guidewire Studio that I hadn’t known. She showed me how to detach the debugging screen from the main window, so that you can a) get a larger view, and b) watch what’s going on as you do changes. Also, I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to do a global search (tiny magnifying glass icon at the top right of the screen—DUH). The most valuable thing I learned was that if you click CTRL and then click on anything in the pcf code, you’re brought right to the underlying Gosu code!

Work Day 21: Fitting a square peg…

I’m happy to report that I’ve just about figured out the fix for my user story…okay, almost. There is a SLIGHT issue with the export to a PDF. The Excel exports are fine, but I’m getting big ugly errors for the PDF export. I suspect it’s due to the existing PDF already having entirely too many fields on the page, and now I’m plopping in one more field. Either I’m going to have to experiment with narrowing the fields in the pcf, or we may need to go to Option B—jettisoning an existing, less important field. I tried to see if l could modify the one PDF, perhaps to make a smaller font, but the configurations appear to be such that a change to one would constitute a change to ALL the PDF exports for the application, period. As much as I’d love to think I’m that frightfully important, the rest of the building (and all the offices countrywide) would probably prefer their PDFs to be a font size that doesn’t require a magnifying glass to make out the payment information.

My mentor is still out, but I’m going to consult with The Alum tomorrow to see if she has any insight into this issue. Perhaps there’s something I’m missing.

Work Day 20: I got a live one…

After an hour of falling asleep to yet another Java video, I’d had it. I decided to check our agile backlog for user stories that I might be able to manage. Several stories down, I FOUND ONE. It’s a very simple story where one needs to add “Invoice Received Date” to the payment transaction screen. I also have to make sure a person can download this field with all the other fields in an Excel file and in a pdf (which may be trickier), but it looks, overall, like a simple enhancement. I checked with our product owner, and she’s good with the fact that this might take me a while, seeing as it will be my first story. The thing has been out on the backlog for 95 days, so it’s not like anyone has been screaming for it. I know this sounds confusing, seeing as I said “agile”. We actually work Kanban, so I don’t have to have this done for a sprint. I will, however, have to keep an eye on our release dates.

I’m just so thrilled to finally have some real work to do!

Work Day 19: A Class Act

On Friday, I did some more work with coderbyte. I figured out how to take each of the exercises and make some standalone Java classes. It gave me a bit more insight into how the syntax works. I tried to figure out how to take these same exercises and create them in Gosu, but that was one big goose egg. The Gosu Reference Guide is almost impossible to follow when it comes to looking up how to do a certain type of function/method. I do want to ultimately crack this, though, so that I can understand Gosu better. Unfortunately, Gosu is not a language where you can google your way to a solution. The entire thing is locked down tighter than Fort Knox.

I was going to watch the Pluralsight Spring Batch video, but I didn’t. I do still need to understand how that whole process works, if I’m going to be able to function on my team. We do have a lot of user stores that deal with integration.

On a more exciting note, my Saturday was spent at the New England Fiber Festival!

https://www.easternstatesexposition.com/events/2019/fiberfestival

We had a fantastic time! I confess there were yarn purchases. I bought eight skeins of stunningly beautiful yarn to make a sweater for myself. I picked a simple pattern that a) will look good on me, and b) will be a no-brainer to work on as I spend my upcoming months cracking code.

SW Merino – Bulky

%100 Superwash Merino

108 yds

Hand Dyed – “Brew”

www.yarnhygge.com

Work Day 18: Exercisin’ Java

I’m happy to report our instructor sent us a very cool site to do Java exercises:

https://coderbyte.com/challenges

It’s a bit less intimidating than codingbat. I managed to do quite a few of the exercises. I saved all of them, with tons of comments, so that I have a ready reference of the different types of functions. One of my side projects is going to be to see if I can write these same types of functions using Gosu. Speaking of Gosu, I did some experimenting for the first time with the code on my local machine. Not much of anything happened, but at least I took the risk. I was going to go hog-wild and do something mad like deleting a button, but that seemed somehow wrong. At the very least, I think I’m finally at a point where I can at least try out a small user story (low, low, LOW down in the list, and something no one will flip out over if it’s not done in a timely manner). I may need to figure out Spring Batch first, but I suppose I could try to do both.

You know, I’m really hoping that a year from now I’ll read this and roar with laughter over how far I’ve come by that point.