Software Development and Programming Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[KritNC]

You might wonder what is the purpose of frameworks like Angular, Ember or even libraries like React? The are all used to aid in the creation of single page applications (SPAs) in which your refreshes are minimized. In the old days before AJAX, every time you clicked on a link, you'd send a request to a server with some information and the WHOLE page would have to reload. With AJAX and javascript, you are able to get dynamic updates. Think about when you go visit a shopping cart page and you see a cart section on the page update dynamically without you having to refresh. SPAs allow for only a certain portion of the page to be rerendered as opposed to the whole page.

What is AJAX? It stands for asynchronous javascript and XML. The purpose of AJAX is to be able to send requests to the server and get pieces of information back after the initial page load, and then javascript is used to dynamically update the page with that new information. The XML portion stands for extensible markup language, and was originally the data format that was returned from the server. Now, JSON, which is Javascript Object Notation, is the format that is typically used to return data form the server. It is much easier to parse and deal with than XML.

So in essence, a page loads. You interact with a page in some form or fashion, and behind the scenes, some of your actions cause a type of request to be sent to the server. The server analyzes your request, and then it returns data typically in JSON format. The data is then inserted into the page dynamically without you having to refresh. This is what a lot of those huge frameworks such as Angular or Ember make easier.

Have you heard of people using AJAX with rails apps?

I am building an app now that pulls your location from your ip address then enters that into an API that returns the local weather in your area. After we have the weather information for your area we recommend a drink from our database depending on the temperature outside. They next step is we gather the weather info and see if on this day in your area it would be better to do an outside activity or inside activity. Then based on that information and your location which we pulled earlier it gathers events in your area that would be suited to the current weather conditions in your area.

The app does not have a very clear goal (based on weather we pick a drink and activity for you to do while you drink it) but it has been fun to build and I have learned alot in the process.

I am really working on writing good clean code now and have been going back over all of my code to try to tighten it up as much as possible. I might post the link to the app once I get it stylized a little more. I would love some feedback and maybe if you have any ideas I could try to implement into the app as well.

 

[Jx2]

Anyone into web app development? I've taught myself basics in html, css, javascript, php, mySQL, and a little AJAX. With that I built the site you see in my signature. Now, I haven't worked on the project in over two years now, a lot of the code and functions are since defunct. What I would like to do is take the basic idea of the site (which in and of itself operates pretty illegally as I use site framing all throughout it) and take the basic framework and design it into a web browser application. I've bought this

but have not delved into it yet because I'm looking to invest in a new Macbook in January. Once I buy that, I'll throw xampp on there and get back into developing. Just kinda want to know what I'm up against. Will a basic understanding of Javascript et. al. be sufficient to tackling web app development after I've been out of programming for awhile?

 

[No1]

I have been tossing around start up ideas in my head but being a lawyer and not a programmer by trade has been kind of a road block.

 

[kevm3]

Have you heard of people using AJAX with rails apps?

I am building an app now that pulls your location from your ip address then enters that into an API that returns the local weather in your area. After we have the weather information for your area we recommend a drink from our database depending on the temperature outside. They next step is we gather the weather info and see if on this day in your area it would be better to do an outside activity or inside activity. Then based on that information and your location which we pulled earlier it gathers events in your area that would be suited to the current weather conditions in your area.

The app does not have a very clear goal (based on weather we pick a drink and activity for you to do while you drink it) but it has been fun to build and I have learned alot in the process.

I am really working on writing good clean code now and have been going back over all of my code to try to tighten it up as much as possible. I might post the link to the app once I get it stylized a little more. I would love some feedback and maybe if you have any ideas I could try to implement into the app as well.

Yeah, they actually have some built in functions in rails that allows you to use basic AJAX without having to touch javascript yourself
Basic AJAX in Ruby on Rails - RichOnRails.com

 

[kevm3]

Anyone into web app development? I've taught myself basics in html, css, javascript, php, mySQL, and a little AJAX. With that I built the site you see in my signature. Now, I haven't worked on the project in over two years now, a lot of the code and functions are since defunct. What I would like to do is take the basic idea of the site (which in and of itself operates pretty illegally as I use site framing all throughout it) and take the basic framework and design it into a web browser application. I've bought this

but have not delved into it yet because I'm looking to invest in a new Macbook in January. Once I buy that, I'll throw xampp on there and get back into developing. Just kinda want to know what I'm up against. Will a basic understanding of Javascript et. al. be sufficient to tackling web app development after I've been out of programming for awhile?

If you're only going to make fairly static sites, then I'm sure you could get by with passable Javascript. However, the trend of the web is increasingly javascript centric and more things are moving to the front-end, so if you're interested in modern, professional development, you'll have to hone in on your javascript as well.

 

[Virtuous_Brotha]

anyone work in software testing? recruiter hollered at me with a role in that wonder what that shyt is like

 

[kevm3]

anyone work in software testing? recruiter hollered at me with a role in that wonder what that shyt is like

Will you be writing tests or more like using the software and reporting back?

 

[kevm3]

Finally deployed another app after working through another long tutorial
RecipesApp

Also, fixed a couple of things about my other one so that email validation works correctly. In ruby on rails, my next thing is to really dig deep into active record and learn how models associate with each other. I'll probably post my observations here.

 

[Virtuous_Brotha]

Will you be writing tests or more like using the software and reporting back?

here is some of the specs that i could be trained to do, sounds crazy i used to think testing was just about getting excel out and typing up predicted outcomes and actual outcomes lol but i guess it depends what your testing, the role can transcend into not just software but testing vehicles and other transport

• Test Automation with Ruby using Watir, Capybara and Selenium

• Using UNIX Shells, Git and GitHub to manage a working repository
• Agile Testing

• Defect Tracking using TFS
• User stories and acceptance criterial
  
• Using Quality Center to log and monitor defects
  Executing functional tests within Quality centre
  Continuously Monitoring Change requests and amending tests scripts accordingly
  Providing estimation of test cycle execution time to the test lead
  
• Developing smoke test packs to test the readiness and stability of new connect releases
  
• - Design scenario driven test cases
  
• Documenting new processes & change requests and progressing them through to multiple approval stages
  - Requirements analysis

 

[kevm3]

here is some of the specs that i could be trained to do, sounds crazy i used to think testing was just about getting excel out and typing up predicted outcomes and actual outcomes lol but i guess it depends what your testing, the role can transcend into not just software but testing vehicles and other transport

• Test Automation with Ruby using Watir, Capybara and Selenium

• Using UNIX Shells, Git and GitHub to manage a working repository
• Agile Testing

• Defect Tracking using TFS
• User stories and acceptance criterial
  
• Using Quality Center to log and monitor defects
  Executing functional tests within Quality centre
  Continuously Monitoring Change requests and amending tests scripts accordingly
  Providing estimation of test cycle execution time to the test lead
  
• Developing smoke test packs to test the readiness and stability of new connect releases
  
• - Design scenario driven test cases
  
• Documenting new processes & change requests and progressing them through to multiple approval stages
  - Requirements analysis

Ah software testing. I haven't done it at a company, but I've done it on some personal projects. Looks like you will be using Rails and it's testing frameworks. Capybara and Selenium are pretty interesting. They pretty much allow you to simulate a user going through various aspects of pages and performing actions like clicking on x action and verifying that x result was returned using code.

 

[kevm3]

Finally found out how to integrate angular and rails. I have rails kicking out Json and angular doing just about everything else. Was pretty difficult to get going at first, but now I'm making progress.

 

[kevm3]

The site is very raw right now, but I finally got angular integration, which means this is an SPA. You don't have to completely reload the page and it uses angular for the majority of the routing as opposed to rails. It does ajax calls to the server and is returned JSON, and the necessary data is then extracted and posted to the page.

BlogU

I haven't even changed the url... but I'm posting it early so you can observe progress as it is made.

 

[↓R↑LYB]

Somebody needs to sticky this tread

 

[Matt504]

Somebody needs to sticky this tread

I agree, I didn't even know this thread existed, I could have been helping the brehs out with rails

 

[↓R↑LYB]

Question to all the programming brehs, if someone wanted to become a developer, what languages and skill set do they need for an entry level position?