HappyDanceHappyDanceHappyDance!!!!

I DID it!!! I finally figured out what I was doing wrong with the JUnit testing. There is a line of code at the beginning of the test for a field that says “contextData.” Initially, it appeared to be some sort of memo or reference. As I’d exhausted every other option this week, short of Voodoo chants, I checked the field again and…I was wrong! Far from being a “memo field,” the code is actually used to pull in the data elements that have been changed in the payload. So, in my instance, I needed to add Date of Birth, Loss Date, and Driver Age to this string, separated by pipes, so that these are be accounted for in the test.

As a result, I’m FINALLY returning data, and the correct data to boot! I need to write up more JUnit tests for different scenarios, but at least I now understand how these particular ones work.

I also participated in a fire drill today—okay, it was more like a full-on 5-alarm blaze. Our BA (you remember him—the poor bastard who inherited all my work when I went off to Code Academy last July) found out that one of the user stories for his other agile group tanked in regression-testing. The developer who worked on it is offshore and was one of the many who was off for Pongal. It was my boss’ idea to put me on this as a learning experience, with the other developers. We all checked different things to see why this wasn’t working. My task was to scour the past release’s code for anything to do with the logic that was broken, and then compare to see what was overlooked and/or changed by the user story code in this release.

THEN, it occurred to me…I asked our BA, “What exactly DID the error message say?” I searched our GitHub repository for the exact wording, and FOUND it! The odd error message came from one of the new Gosu rules (.gr file) the user story added. I did my best to figure out what on earth the code meant that led up to it throwing an error. The other developers had in the meantime found other odd things to do with the test environment, so hopefully between all of us the group can determine how to fix the issue.

I have to say it was very exciting to discover that I can in fact troubleshoot code I had nothing to do with writing, and understand it! This is pretty good, in that I’m hopeless at troubleshooting knitting and crocheting mistakes for people when I didn’t personally create the article.

Now back to the JUnits! I’m hoping for a peaceful Friday to complete them…

HappyDanceHappyDanceHappyDance!!!!

I DID it!!! I finally figured out what I was doing wrong with the JUnit testing. There is a line of code at the beginning of the test for a field that says “contextData.” Initially, it appeared to be some sort of memo or reference. As I’d exhausted every other option this week, short of Voodoo chants, I checked the field again and…I was wrong! Far from being a “memo field,” the code is actually used to pull in the data elements that have been changed in the payload. So, in my instance, I needed to add Date of Birth, Loss Date, and Driver Age to this string, separated by pipes, so that these are be accounted for in the test.

As a result, I’m FINALLY returning data, and the correct data to boot! I need to write up more JUnit tests for different scenarios, but at least I now understand how these particular ones work.

I also participated in a fire drill today—okay, it was more like a full-on 5-alarm blaze. Our BA (you remember him—the poor bastard who inherited all my work when I went off to Code Academy last July) found out that one of the user stories for his other agile group tanked in regression-testing. The developer who worked on it is offshore and was one of the many who was off for Pongal. It was my boss’ idea to put me on this as a learning experience, with the other developers. We all checked different things to see why this wasn’t working. My task was to scour the past release’s code for anything to do with the logic that was broken, and then compare to see what was overlooked and/or changed by the user story code in this release.

THEN, it occurred to me…I asked our BA, “What exactly DID the error message say?” I searched our GitHub repository for the exact wording, and FOUND it! The odd error message came from one of the new Gosu rules (.gr file) the user story added. I did my best to figure out what on earth the code meant that led up to it throwing an error. The other developers had in the meantime found other odd things to do with the test environment, so hopefully between all of us the group can determine how to fix the issue.

I have to say it was very exciting to discover that I can in fact troubleshoot code I had nothing to do with writing, and understand it! This is pretty good, in that I’m hopeless at troubleshooting knitting and crocheting mistakes for people when I didn’t personally create the article.

Now back to the JUnits! I’m hoping for a peaceful Friday to complete them…

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.