Month: May 2020

Updated the blog! Cue the code!

I know I haven’t been as prolific as usual lately…I blame our Agile team’s project. Normally, we deal with enhancements and fixes, which frankly I LOVE. I started out my mainframe programming life back in 1992 dealing with production and enhancements, so I’m quite comfortable “in that space” as they say in corporate-speak. However, our team has taken on a rather larger enhancement, which is frankly more of a project—they’re just not calling it that. Several agile teams and departments are involved in this. I know, in the long run, this will be good, as it involves a new integration with our system, so I’m getting to see how integrations are set up.

The bad part is that we are all working on our stories at the same time, so in the case of my current user story I’ve been having to code off to the side in a Notepad++ document, with the idea that I will be adding my function once the Util class is created. There is really no way to tell if what I’m writing will even WORK. I’m one of those people who needs those visual cues in the Guidewire Studio app (or Spring/Eclipse, if I’m coding in Java) to guide me. You know, “normal” print if everything is kosher and ANGRY RED if there’s an issue. I’m not used to coding blind. I’m sure, once I get more experience, I’ll find this easier, but right now it’s maddening. I’ve also been working on a GUnit test for this, which has been the seventh circle of hell. I think I’ve managed to find some existing GUnit tests that are close to what I’ll be needing, but AGAIN, I need to be able actually run this SOMEWHERE.

I’m also still working with the new guy. The latest thing is that I need to help him upload some Admin Scripts into GitHub for his user story…this is a clear-cut case of the blind leading the blind. I have a sneaking suspicion that my boss is suggesting I help him with all this different things as a way of getting me more familiar with different tasks. I’ve done exactly ONE of these previously, so this is going to be entertaining, to say the very least.

Thank heavens for long weekends…May you all have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! I for one, plan to catch up on all my knitting and crocheting, which has been woefully neglected this week!

Unraveling, without becoming unraveled…

I seem to be unraveling all my previous dilemmas. That mysterious Gosu code turns out to be block code. That still means nothing to me, but now at least I know where to look in the documentation to learn more. I’m also happy to report that frantically posting my query about the damned nested if statements to the Guidewire Community site paid off. I got two suggestions, and the “.add” to an array solution worked! Why I didn’t remember this from my Java class, I don’t know, as it’s similar logic. Sometimes it’s tough to connect what you’ve learned with the current mess in front of you.

In positively JOYOUS news, that ghastly defect user story that spawned ANOTHER defect user story, has finally passed QA and it in the release queue! I suspected this might happen, as I ran a few furtive SQL queries yesterday to check was I thought might be our QA tester’s payloads to the integrated system, and they all looked good. I swear, I’m so happy I could cry…sometimes I really feel like the life of a developer is a series of roller coaster rides—devastating lows followed by meteoric highs. It’s exhausting, but I’ll still take this over being a BA any day.

The new guy got his Java quandary sorted out. He needed version 121 for our Guidewire Studio, but tech support had installed a higher version. He’s now wading through my instructions on how to copy over a database to his local machine, while also trying to figure out his on-boarding HR tasks (signing up for benefits, taking various online courses in our ethics and sensitivity training, etc.). He’s also starting his moving process this weekend, to eventually end up at our southern hub. I can’t imagine attempting to pack and move while learning the ins and outs of a new job, but he appears to be managing it. Seeing as no one is actually physically working at any of our offices at this point, it’s going to remain to be seen when he can actually darken the door of the place. I hear it’s very nice…when you can actually go inside…

Spinning up the new guy!

…and we pause here to ask, WHY ON EARTH DIDN’T MY MENTOR KILL ME WHILE HE HAD THE CHANCE???

I jest…our new developer is a seasoned Gosu developer whom we’ve evidently hired via remote control, seeing as we’re still at DEFCOM 2, virus-wise. He’s currently out in a state two time zones away, but plans to relocate to our southern office. So far, I’ve managed to help him navigate our tech support site from hell. I reassured him that, yes! This site is supposed to be an improvement over the old one! (Can you feel the sarcasm just oozing from my pores?) I got all my accesses six months ago, so natch, in that time tech support has completely changed the ordering process on the site, which makes me look like a complete moron (“Now go to ‘Security Requests’ and…NO—looks like we’re not going to be doing that! Click over here, and…NO, not THAT one, evidently…”). It’s taken two bloody days to get him completely set up.

It then has (so far), taken two days to get him set up with Gosu, because a) something ghastly happened with his Java installation, and b) he’s unfamiliar with GitHub, having worked with SVN previously, so we’ve been having a crash course in GitHub that I am completely ill-equipped to teach. I still have to go to my mentor or our team for help with the messes I get myself into with GitHub.

This has been all while attempting to navigate my latest user story, which is proving to be quite ugly. I’m not sure what spawn of Satan decided on putting those weird \s (or \r or \a — take your pick) notations in Gosu code, but honestly, if you held a loaded gun to my head I STILL can’t tell you what they are for. The best I’ve been able to figure is that they are a shortcut for arrays or views, depending on if the Moon is full or Venus is aligned with Jupiter, or Scorpio is rising. Up to this point, I’ve been able to either cut and paste blocks of this mutant script and modify it slightly or ignore it altogether. However, my current story appears to need me to use this odd code to arrive at a field in a connecting file.

Also, I have a ghastly logic issue. I can’t seem to figure out how to write something where if condition a, b, c, and/or d are true, then fire off ALL their respective error messages. If none of these are true, then go to the next function. I’ve got it working where it sees a true condition and fires off the error message—wonderful! The problem is that the different error messages need to fire off if one of these conditions is true, 2 of them are true, 3, or all 4. Right now, it sees the FIRST true condition and throws that error message, but none of the others (which are also true). I discovered this when I ran it for all 4 being true. Every single fix I do results in ugly compiling errors.

I really need to get the new guy up and running so that perhaps he can help me out with some of this stuff…or at the very least suggest a good algorithm class…