Joe's CSUMB Computer Science Blog

       Git is a version control tool used for tracking and effectively storing changes within a project. Git does not store entire copies of the code base as it stores snapshots of line code changes. Source code can be branched from and new code can be developed in different branches. This enables the development of new features, reducing the risk of introducing new code that may compromise the main branch. Separate repositories can be used to store copies of the entire project, which can be used developing different versions of the application or separating the development of large components of the project.      The Git merge command merges changes from another branch into your working branch. A merge conflict occurs when Git can not automatically perform the merge due overlapping changes in the same lines of code. In this case, the developer must manually edit code to resolve conflicting changes. Otherwise, Git will automatically perform the merge e...

       In lab 3 this week, I developed a simple frontend to communicate customer and order data to the Spring Boot backend. To accomplish this, I used the React library to create reusable interface components. This involved building a user interface for certain tasks such as registering customers and updating customer settings. In React, data can be passed to components as props, which is useful for tasks like providing the EditOrder component data to display a customer's order history prior to editing it. This lab also introduced special functions called hooks  to access the React state and features. The useState function accepts a variable’s initial state and returns an array containing the state variable and function to update the state variable. The useEffect function is used to synchronize with an external system, which in this lab, was used to get orders upon refreshing the page.      This was not my first time using the React library, but t...

       This week I got to work with the Java Spring Boot Framework for the first lab of this class. This lab covered building a RESTful API to update customer and order information, which included using HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE. By creating API endpoints, Customer/Order data received from the client through data transfer objects could be passed to the database through repositories. This application also covered authentication using tokens that were generated during the login process. User authentication in this lab ensures that users can only alter data pertaining to their own account.       While I thought this lab was helpful for learning how to use the Spring framework, I still want to develop a better understanding of how the framework works internally. One concept I was interested in was how the repositories were implemented without explicitly creating classes that implemented them. In my research, I found at runtime, Spri...

Service Learning Summary During my time with Nyamboyo Technical School (NTS) I worked on the new attendance and calendar applications for NTS admin to use on their website. I enjoyed the entire process from developing my ideas to testing new features I created. What I found meaningful about this experience was seeing how the apps I worked on would improve the work process for NTS admin. I am glad I could contribute to NTS and I hope that these features may allow NTS to shift their focus into other areas that support students. There were some challenges though in the beginning like familiarizing myself with the code base and learning about new frameworks and libraries. Thankfully, our lead developer afforded us the time at the beginning of the term to review and study anything we needed so we could start working on once we were confident. Overcoming these challenges in the beginning was rewarding and contributed to the overall positive experience I had with NTS. If I could offer any adv...

The topic I focused on the most this week was dynamic programming. I have not used this technique to solve coding problems yet but I have used a dynamic approach to solve written problems on quizzes. Throughout quizzes in this class, I have written out the pseudocode for a given problem to calculate the output by hand. In some instances, it is time consuming to draw out every operation of a function especially for a recursive function. Instead of drawing out every iteration of the recursive function, I would plug in the return value of the function if I had calculated it already for a given input. The idea of solving problems with the values of sub problems was a main focus of the dynamic programming lecture material. This approach to problem solving was applied to the coin board problem, coin row problem, and finding the nth number in the fibonacci sequence.

This week in class, I learned about heaps, AVL trees, and 2-3 trees. For each of these trees, I focused on better understanding the algorithms needed to insert values, delete values, and search for values. I found that even when I studied materials provided in class this week, these concepts were more difficult to understand than the concepts from previous weeks. What helped me the most in retaining any of the material covered this week was the programming assignment.  Actually applying what I learned from pseudocode in the text book to creating functions helped better my understanding of how these algorithms work. Since our programming assignment focused on heaps, I have a better understanding of heaps work compared to the other trees discussed. When I have the chance, I will try to implement my own AVL tree and 2-3 tree data structures to help myself in the future.