Course Intro - Agile Software Development & DevOps

Agile Software Development & DevOps

Welcome
Who you are
Topics
Structure
Software
What others say
Conclusions

Welcome

Course description

We learn how to build software following contemporary best practices.

This course is as much about process as it is about product.

Students work in teams to produce a software product of their choosing.

Me

Foo Barstein

discord: @foo.barstein
mastodon: @prof@chatter.knowledge.kitchen

Who you are

Profile

Who are you, really?

trying to use up college credits
doing what your parents and advisors tell you to do
interested in becoming a software developer
maybe already are a software developer
hoping to find a decent-paying job
already dressing up like Mark Zuckerberg
just having fun
here for some other reason…. it doesn’t matter!

Welcome!

What you know

computer programming in a reasonably modern language
how to name and save a file to your hard drive and find it later
comfortable on the UNIX/Linux command shell

What you probably don’t know

HTML & CSS
Javascript
Git
How to create software from scratch
How to work in a team over a long time
How to set up workflows so that conflicts resolve themselves
What it’s like to have your work continually monitored by a boss
How to automate away your own job

Topics

Agile development

We will learn agile development’s origins.

In what contexts are “agile” principles useful.
What are its own unique challenges.
In particular, we will follow the Scrum framework for agile development.

Javascript stack

We will dive head-first into the Javascript stack for web app development. In particular, the MERN stack.

MongoDB as the database
Express.js for the back-end.
React.js for the front-end
Node.js as our general Javascript programming environment.

You will absorb HTML, CSS, and Javascript through osmosis…

unless you’re not paying attention.

We will learn through osmosis?

Yes.

This is perhaps the biggest topic of the course… how to teach yourself what you don’t know.

User experience design

You will have to figure out how to determine what makes a good experience versus a mediocre or terrible one.

Skills we will develop

You cannot do contemporary work without some fundamental skills.

Basic UNIX/Linux commands
Version control (i.e. git and GitHub)
Automating the boring parts (i.e. ssh, unit testing, continuous integration, continuous delivery, continuous deployment)

Questions we will answer

There are common questions we will aim to answer:

What is The World Wide Web?
How do you do xyz?
I have an idea for an app… is it hard to do?
Should I go to a start-up academy, or just study at NYU CS?
My internship requires me to know express-validator…. what is that?
My friend is making mad money at a start-up using MongoDB… can I learn that?

Structure

Overview

This course involves each of the following:

Lectures
Readings & watchings
Team project… just 1
Individual exercises… a few
Quizzes… lots of them

Grading

Grading is broken down as follows:

35%: Quizzes
15%: Individual exercises
50%: Team project

Texts

No single textbook is necessary nor sufficient for this course. We will refer to various online resources where relevant.

Our technology stack is very popular, with plenty of good documentation and tutorials.

Software

Install these now

You will need a variety of software tools. Here are a few to set up right now.

Git - for Mac or for Windows
A UNIX-like shell, such as in Mac’s Terminal or Git Bash (part of Git for Windows) or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). Do not use the Windows’ default Powershell.
an account set up on GitHub.com
Visual Studio Code
Node.js
Discord

Useful resources

Setting Up Bash within Visual Studio Code

WINDOWS USERS - you should use Git Bash or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) rather than Windows’ default Powershell or other command line shell program. To set Git Bash or WSL as the default terminal shell within Visual Studio Code, you can try to follow the instructions in the second answer here by Mahade Walid and edited by FruityOatyBar (ignore the first answe, which is outdated).

Javascript

Exploring ES6, by Alex Rauschmayer
Eloquent Javascript, by Marijn Haverbeke
The Modern Javascript Tutorial, by javascript.info

React.js

React.js official site, including tutorials and documentation.
React Router Tutorial, by Dev Ed.
Video course: React for Web Designers, by Joe Chellman

Express.js

Express.js official site, including tutorials and documentation.
Build A Restful Api With Node.js Express & MongoDB, by Dev Ed.
Video course: Dynamic websites with Node and Express, by Daniel Khan

MongoDB and Mongoose

Video course: Databases for Node.js Developers, by Daniel Khan
Mongoose official site, including tutorials and documentation.

What Others Say

The Good

A sample of comments left by former students:

It is really a hands–on experience in developing an app! Really happy to see an idea coming to life.

The structure of this course is so well–organized! This is definitely the number one course I will recommend people take if they want to learn about software development.

The group work we had to do throughout the entire semester helped me learn many things about time management and as well as how real life projects in developing apps and websites work.

I really liked the class! Prof. Bloomberg is eloquent and thorough in his explanations of concepts.

The Bad

A sample of comments left by former students:

There was too much time spent on the unnecessary parts. This led to the situation that there was not much time for the actual project work. I think it will be better if we could directly dive into Sprint 0.

More focus and time spent on the second half of the course

It could improve by not having quizzes, as they don’t help me improve or learn much.

This class had really unclear grading – graders need to be more fair and clear with their rubrics and grading system

While it is the nature of a teamwork class, I would like for there to be more protections in place for students who are doing the bulk of the work.

The Ugly

It made me learn that terrible graders can ruin an otherwise decent class.

The worst. the whole course is a shitshow. My biggest waste of tuition fee.

The worst professor ever. Pissed every single day taking his class. He just never cares much about his classes.

If you have no prior web dev exp with MERN stack, AVOID unless want to self-study for 4 months and work with trolls in group pj. Lecture is absolute joke, only terminology, then expects you to know everything and start coding. 0 support, arrogant & vauge to questions usually. Grade: A tho cuz I wrote tons. But, AVOID, dont try!!!