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…
Dear WildKnitter: I have been there and DONE THAT (STILL doing that!!!!): Start writing the documentation, if not for others, FOR YOURSELF!!! I am finding that the projects I have been on in latter years have no existing documentation and a lot of excuses why not. (Time is the biggest excuse. Laziness and fear of being replaced are the real reasons.) Just start documenting. Decide that you will be documenting no matter what. No one else is going to do it. Just do it. With your background, NO ONE is going to be able to document better than you. “Just figure it out” is code for “I didn’t want to document it, and I don’t want to have to explain it because I don’t know.” No documentation makes things go very, very slowly. Don’t let anyone give you hard time because nothing is currently documented to help you. You will make a difference for the next new guy behind you, and documenting makes you a leader. The struggle is worth it!!!!!!!!!!! Carol
That’s what I was thinking!