Asidua

Alan

I am attending Queen’s University Belfast where I am studying towards a MEng in Computer Science.

Deciding to do a degree in Computer Science was an easy choice to make as from a young age I have been interested in computers and the challenges that they offer. As programming is one of my main hobbies I spend a lot of my time improving both my programming and scripting skills, with a biased focus placed on web development languages. Over the years, I have gained knowledge in ECMAScript, Java, ASM, AS3.0, SQL, C#, PCRE Regular Expression and PHP -don’t judge me, it’s an awesome language!

I was interested in joining Asidua as there was a placed emphasis on the usage of newer technologies and the learning of new skills. I am always keen to undertake new challenges, and Asidua really seemed like the right place to do this at, particularly when one of the company’s values is, “We continually learn so that we are the best at everything we do” – Which I feel I can fully relate to. I am very fortunate to have been given this opportunity to work with Asidua through this Scholarship programme.

If you want to learn more about my experiences in Asidua, please read my regular blog updates below…

29th June 2011
I feel that over the past 8 weeks I have learnt a lot. There have been many instances were interesting challenges have come up, and I feel as though there will be many more to come whilst working with Asidua. I hope to apply the knowledge I have gained whilst at Asidua to my second year of university, particularly the methodology of agile development, and the importance of standing up at the daily stand-up scrum meetings. I have also decided to start writing a Java Game Engine in my spare time, which will rely on some of the technologies that I have learnt whilst on my placement at Asidua. Particularly with using Hibernate, as I like the idea of mapping SQL results straight to POJOs, and using a versioning system during development, I have now set up on SVN on VPS for this purpose. It is great to know that I have learnt so many new things during my time at Asidua!


27th June 2011
Although the current project that I am assigned to is using Java, I have been invited to a 5 day Programming with C# Master class which will last throughout August. I have only spent a bit of time using C# when I installed mono on my VPS to make a CMS system, and a screenshot grabber/editor that uploaded the image to my VPS. It’s really great knowing Asidua can offer training that will strengthen my existing knowledge of C#!


18th July 2011
As the sprint deadlines for the newest revision of the application have arrived, there has been a lot of focus placed on confirming that the system performs as expected. During this week I therefore had to spend a lot of time testing that everything was fully functioning.


11th July 2011
During this week I spent time investigating two defects that one of the team’s Principle Engineers had pointed out to Keith and I. There was a problem with the population of a selection field when attempting to do a fuzzy match for a particular site. I had originally thought that it was just a simple race condition, as I was told the form was previously not written with an AJAX call. To confirm this I changed the XHR’s asynchronous call to no longer be asynchronous. Sadly the fix was not as easy as that! After some debugging I was able to find and fix the problem though. The other defect was much easier to fix as it was just an aesthetics problem with the location of control buttons.


4th July 2011
After using used this system for longer period of time, I noticed that it would be nice to create tools that would improve the productivity of developers. The current system requires a lot of forms to be filled in to create new Orders etc, so I spent time developing a tool which would use JavaScript Injection to manipulate the DOM and automatically complete the fields required to be filled in. Another problem with the system was that it disabled the user (And therefore the developer) from using the Right Click menu, which caused a rather annoying alert to appear. Obviously the developer cannot remove this from the system server side, so I used the same concept as before to remove this limitation client side, so that it will not cause any disruptions when it comes to deploying the WAR file for the application.


27th June 2011
This week I helped a colleague who was working on the newest Revision for the application. The requirement for this sprint was to add a new validation rule for validating the user’s inputted MD5 password. Having knowledge of both JavaScript and PCRE Regular Expression I was able to lend a hand in adding this new code. I know that JavaScript doesn’t support PCRE fully, but thankfully we didn’t need to use lookbehinds within the RegEx!


20th June 2011
The current project I am assigned to is a bespoke Java application which is designed to capture, fulfil, and report service delivery orders. This web application is written in Java and uses Java Server Pages. It is nice knowing that the project is not using servlets, as I liked the familiarity of using the JSTL provided with JSP, as I have used C# and PHP before which offer similar tag functionality. The current project also uses an Oracle database, and Oracle’s WebLogic, both of which I have never used before. Thankfully the learning curve for using Oracle’s database was thankfully not too great, as I have previous experience using mySQL .


13th June 2011
I have just completed the first week of eight placement weeks with Asidua. During this week I was given a lot of reading material to go through as I have been introduced to a very large Java application called COT+. This project has introduced many new technologies to me that I had not seen before, such as Hibernate which allows for Object-relational mapping through the creation of XML files, Spring and Struts. The atmosphere within Asidua is really friendly and relaxed. I can tell that Asidua is going to be a lot of fun as on the first day of my placement I challenged to play Mario Kart, I came last, but for my first go I didn’t do too badly! But I won’t lie; the TV and Wii within the Kitchen Area are amazing. I hope to give a more in-depth view about what project I have been assigned to in this blog next week!