worklifebalance – WildKnitter Codes

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!

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…

From Learning—to Showing—the Ropes!

So, another day, another WFH (working from home) adventure. Once upon a time, WFH was an exciting privilege, where you got to sip the tea that you leisurely made, ate oatmeal that DIDN’T come out of a microwave, and quietly did your work; meanwhile escaping all the chaos, gossip, and annoyance of the office. Now, it’s taken on a whole new meaning since EVERYONE is working from home, minus a few hundred at my company (“Can you hear me? You’re breaking up! I can’t see your screen. Is so-and-so joining the meeting? What was that again?”).

We have a new guy starting next week, and I’m going to have to help him get aclimated, which is going to be positively weird to do via remote control. Granted, the guy is in another state, so I would have had to work with him remotely anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing. Despite my grumbling, the exciting thing is that I’ve hit some sort of a new level in my development job. I’m actually being trusted to show a new developer the ropes! We sincerely hope I can remember how to get Guidewire Studio up and running for a brand-new person, not to mention Spring for our integration work (Java).

I’m also now being asked to do code reviews! I really didn’t think anyone would trust with that until at least my 1-year mark, but I’ve done quite a few now. It’s actually a good way to check someone else’s code and learn from it…as opposed to spending and entire DAY trying to figure out a defect found in QA (which is how I spent my entire day yesterday).

And, of course, I’ve been doing copious amounts of knitting and crocheting in our time of quarantine. I confess, the WIPs are hopelessly out of control. I’m working on:

An Annie’s Attic Crochet Striped Afghan Club project

A knitted mask, with an i-Cord from hell

A baby blanket ( you just KNOW someone is going to end this quarantine pregnant)

A Sophie’s Universe Crochet afghan (I’ll be working on this one until they put me 6-feet under)

A Mary Maxim Woodlands Striped crochet afghan

I know there’s another one, but I can’t remember it right now…

On that note, must get back to the old backlog, to see what my next adventure is!

It’s been a while…

I apologize for the VERY long time between posts! The fact of the matter is I had no inkling of just how tough it was going to be to do a remote Java/Spring class in the middle of the bedlam that is our Covid-19 crisis, while also attempting to do regular work when emergencies arose. I spent one ENTIRE weekend I’m never getting back attempting to solve and fix some ghastly error I’d made in one of my user stories. Oddly enough, far from this being an issue, I actually got a kudos for being willing to work above and beyond to fix the problem. I sort of think that it might have been better had I NOT made the mistake in the first place, but I’m not going to argue!

The class was a big help in enabling me to better understand Java and Spring. It actually wasn’t as bad to do an online class as I thought it would be. If anything, it was good because I wasn’t having to drive home through traffic, set up everything again at home, and slog through homework for ages. I was able to get any homework done much sooner, as I was already in front of a screen.

At present, we are all still working from home. I can’t complain, as really, we have friends who have either a) lost their jobs, b) had a pay-cut, or c) have to keep working with the public, as they are essential. Our essential friend is now facing uncertainty, as one of her coworkers has tested positive. We have two friends now who have had the virus, but thankfully have beat it–it took three agonizing weeks, though. So, my paltry issues surrounding connectivity (a can of compressed air blown into the ethernet slots solved the issue), misunderstandings (“What did you say? Your headphones are cutting out again!”), figuring out the mask situation (mine homemade one was an epic FAIL), and ailing vehicles (fun fact: a 16-year-old car with a 7-year-old battery is going to crap out if you don’t drive it for ages on end) — all of this pales in comparison with everyone else’s struggles. That’s why I’m so ANNOYED at that insipid “We’re all in this together!” slogan. We’re just not, really.

But enough belly-aching. For the sake of my sanity, I’m going to try to blog on a more frequent basis. And hopefully come up with a better mask.

You’re on all the TVs!

…or, my 15 minutes of fame.

A very BIZARRE thing has happened at my company in the past month. They are about to start up another Code Academy class for 2020, and they’ve just put out the notice on our Intranet site — with Yours Truly as the cover girl.

Perhaps I should back up. About a month ago, three of us alums from last year’s class were asked to come to Home Office (The Mothership) to have photos taken to shill for the new Code Academy campaign. We got down there and discovered that, far from being a few photos, this was to be a whole photo shoot! They had us walking around the building, carrying our laptops, looking like we were on our way somewhere important. We were coached, “Talk! Just like you would in any other everyday exchange!” I turned to the other two and said, “I don’t know about you, but our meetings are all Skype…we don’t walk ANYWHERE.” They has us sit at a desk, like we were working. They had us sitting around one of those collaborative tables, as if we were discussing something of great import—again, FAR from anyone’s reality. Any of my collaborations take place with people in Chennai at 8:00 am via Skype, or with people in the building at our desks, with someone inevitably teetering on one of those ridiculous padded filing cabinets that are supposed to double as a chair. We did all have fun with the photo shoot, and I was fairly certain my two much younger fellow alums were going to be the focus of the campaign.

But, noooo…

A few days ago, someone from another Agile team came up to me and announced, “We have a bet!” I looked at her…perhaps a bet over exactly when I’m going to self-implode from my ongoing GUnit testing cluster****? She got out her phone and showed me a picture she’d snapped. “Is this you? You’re on all the TVs in the building!” I looked and there was what had to be the worst picture anyone has ever taken of me, sitting at the desk pretending to work. She continued, “We were confused as to whether or not it was you, because that’s not your desk!” I raced down to the TV by the elevator and sure enough, there I was, large as life! I checked the Intranet site and there was an equally hideous picture of me with one of the alums. She, at least, looked good. I’m not sure what’s worse—that I looked every minute of my 55 years, or that they didn’t get all the detail of the hand-knit sheep sweater I was wearing—that one I knit all through Code Academy, to preserve my sanity.

Since then, I’ve had complete strangers stop me in the hallway, exclaiming, “Oh my God, it’s you! Your picture is EVERYWHERE!” The good thing about this is that I’ve also had people ask me about the Code Academy program. I’ve been able to give them an overview of the program and tell them that it was a fantastic experience, and that I’m very happy now that I’m a developer. Hopefully all this was worth it, and there will be a lot of applicants this year.

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!!!!

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.

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

Work Day 50: Seeing light at the end of the tunnel…

…that we really hope isn’t the on-coming train!

I’m making slow, but steady progress on my JUnit issue…if you count “finally finding the right people to consult” as progress. My poor, long-suffering mentor is inundated with work for the upcoming release, so he’s tossed the ball back into my team’s court (you know it’s bad when I’m resorting to sports analogies). One of my team members figured out part of my issue. I definitely had no access to get a Nexus Repo Key for that Maven step for setting up Spring Batch. The good news is that I put in a tech support request, and I got access to get one—miraculously in one day! At that point, I was totally fried, so I’m going to attempt to do this tomorrow.

This brings me to the bad news. The other person on my team who’s helping me…he’s in India. Yours Truly is going to get into work at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning to be ready to talk to him at 8:00 am. As much as I’m very grateful to him, this is going to cut into my morning yarn time! In addition to my sock-knitting, I’m also crocheting the Sophie’s Universe Afghan, which requires early morning quiet time, in order for me to concentrate. It’s one of those maddening patterns where, even though I’ve had oodles of years in crocheting experience, I’m still frogging back practically every row, due to being hopelessly off in stitch count. I’m only a few rows in, so far!

Work Day 49: Training and more training…

…or, am I EVER going to figure out all this stuff?

This morning we had another CodeAcademy continuing training session — this time for client-side JavaScript testing. We worked through Mocha and Jasmine examples, with our takeaway being to modify the code to add to the constructor, and experiment with different tests. While I can understand this kind of testing, I’m still struggling with my Java JUnit testing for my user story. I cannot get my JUnit test to work in Eclipse. In looking at it, and comparing to other JUnit tests in our code, I think I’m missing a few things, and oddly, my test isn’t “tracking”—I’m getting an error saying the class isn’t “found.” As it is, though, none of the JUnit tests are working for my setup, so my issues may run a bit deeper than just a few misplaced @Test indicators.

I decided to eat crow and work through a Pluralsight video on JUnit testing. I’m also going to try to make a push to work through more of the Udemy course, as they do cover JUnit testing further along in the course. I even bought a book on JUnit testing (Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java 8 with JUnit by Jeff Langr—God Bless Amazon…). Hopefully with all this and having my mentor help me out (I’m going to need help setting up Spring anyway), I’ll muddle through.

All this setup and testing for a few lines of code change…it’s just unbelievable!

Work Day 45: Back in the Saddle Again!

…but what on earth are my passwords???

It was a very nice holiday break marked by good times with our family and friends, a few cleaning projects, finishing knitting projects, endless cookie-baking, and five extra pounds I need to get rid off. Alas—what with all the preparations, festivities, tinkering with new gadgets I got for presents—I only got in ONE Udemy Java course session. The good news is that I hadn’t forgotten anything, so I’m hopeful that once I get past the 3,456 emails in my inbox, that I’ll be able to be somewhat functional.

…these were my thoughts BEFORE I got back to work and discovered we’ve gone from ClaimCenter 9.0.5 to 9.0.7. The email went out last week, when most people were out for Christmas. I had to update Guidewire, add in code for my two user stories (story #3 was usurped in my absence, due to requirement changes), retest them, and push everything out to GitHub for a code review again — for FRIDAY. It took until 2:30 pm just to have 9.0.7 fully functional in my local. My only consolation was that I wasn’t alone—other people had a ghastly time attempting the change. I took copious notes for the next time we have to go up a version, including additions to my ongoing error file, where I note down all the errors I’ve encountered so far and how to resolve them.

And a Happy New Year to you, too!