Week 4 Reflections

Ok so I think that I have learned a bit this sprint as a lot of things were new to me. I think the first thing is it feels like the Scrum side of things is finally rolling to where it actually makes sense to me and I can see the benefits of it now that I am putting it to use. I like how it all works and it helps to keep me organized and on track. It feels good to be putting the tools of the trade to use. Aside from the Scrum side of things I have learned a lot about Angular and the project we will be working on. I am still finding it challenging as I have never used Angular before and am really not familiar with Javascript aside from the basics and I feel like that it is making it harder for me to grasp not knowing it ahead of time. I am having to not only look up Angular stuff, but also referring to J.S. docs as well. It isn’t hindering me that much just a bit more work than I had originally thought.

I was excited to get the OpenMRS standalone running, thanks to some of the other classmates help with code that needed changing, but it was definitely a great feeling. I didn’t have much of an issue getting it up and running. The NG2-amrs build was a little more frustrating to get up and running. I spent a good deal getting help from classmates as well as the README (who would of thought that would be helpful right?) but I did get it going and did cartwheels. A bit was stupid mistakes and not taking a break when I should have, but that is part of the learning process. Come to find out, that was the easy part so far.

I am now actually into the code, well the login/auth code side of things and digging into the meat and potatoes of what we will be working on. The goal up until now was to re-write the auth/login module to get a better understanding of how Angular works and how Ng2-amrs login is working. We as a team ended up breaking the story down into smaller more manageable tasks so it wasn’t so overwhelming. Initially we had committed to re-writing the whole module on one card, but split into re-writing the HTML/CSS component first then digging into the actual auth/routing side of things. That made life a bit smoother for me. I basically copied the HTML/CSS taking note of things that I didn’t grasp, such as the Angular additions (I have a good understanding of HTML/CSS). The challenge is in the writing of the actual Angular. I had to do a lot of peaking at the original code as well bouncing back to DOCS/README/Tutorials and other help sites, but got it done. I am still far from fluent and need a lot of help I think to further my understanding, but I am persistent and have more help than I could ask for and am not afraid to ask. That is why we are here in the first place. I am still not 100% up to par on the RESTful architecture and routing but I am getting there. The more I am exposed and the more I write and do the more comfortable I am.

I guess to wrap it up for this Sprint, I have to say I am pleasantly pleased so far and look forward to what is to come and to see how my blog grows and I grow in the process. I am looking forward to learning more about the Ng2-Amrs project and collaborating with other developers via the MRS wiki and forums and digging into the issue tracker on the JIRA server (another thing I know zero about and am looking forward to learning) and just how everything fits together. It is great actually seeing the process unfold and learning new things. Until the next learning reflection blog…..