Another week, and another month goes by, let’s look back into what this week had in store.

Last week I had my first sprint review, and I experienced for the first time the stress and pressure of seeing how this deadline was coming closer and closer with work still to be done. While I think I handled it in a reasonable manner, at the same time I think I had a bit of a school mentality going in, having more of a punishment or negative marks kind of expectation for the tasks that we weren’t able to pull in time. A little bit to my surprise (though in retrospective, it does sound kind of obvious), rather than going into the sprint review with a mentality of assigning blame or dishing out reprimands, it was more in line with, well, a review. The dynamic consisted in a careful analysis of each of the tasks assigned for the sprint, analyzing the metrics of what was done, what could be continue to be done, and which goals weren’t achieved. I blame years of school for this, but the approach for this last metric wasn’t to punish or blame, but rather to analyze the reasons the task was left in the state it was, understanding the implications of such reasons and designing a plan of action to either tackle it next sprint or differ it due to unforeseen reasons. It is in these moments that I reflect back on the behaviors that were ingrained in me and were taken for granted for such many years, the school mentality that I am still fighting to get rid of. It isn’t easy, but the outlook that work related environments are more worried about getting results done rather than correcting each flaw and punishing each mistake, well, it is quite relieving. Who would have known life doesn’t always have to be race, eh?

The rest of the week I continued focusing on the task I had begun last week, with a better understanding and insight of the difficulties and scope that it required. It was quite an interesting experience, letting me get some practice in both visual design of a page and the management of its state. It also helped me to realize the importance of making frequent commits, as by the end I had several filed that had been modified and which belonged to different tasks, and organizing them at the end wasn’t such a fun experience.

In regards to preparation, this week I focused on doing some of the Hackerrank’s Java exercises. If I had to compare my experience between these exercises and last week’s Ruby problems I did, I must certainly say that Java is a bit rougher to work around. I wasn’t able to do as many problems as I did with Ruby, and yet I felt way more tired this time. I attribute this to the fact that Java can be more obtuse with its error messages and the way things are done, which can be quite frustrating for someone with little to none prior experience. Regardless, aside from the basics, this week I was able to get some practice with Regex, BigNumbers and Lists.

Let’s hope for another productive and fruitful month!

My_Java_Experience