Writing PHP Script

I accepted a stretch goal to create a needs assesment form yesterday. It started with my inquiry into how a user would create an ContractPal Enterprise account. The new account creation process is still a bit convoluted. As we discussed possible solutions, Brad asked if I could create an “opportunity assessment” page and add it to the company web site.

We decided the requirements would be a needs assesment form and contact information, e.g. how many transactions in a month or how much time is required to close a transaction. The submitted form is forwarded to his email address. He can then follow up with a phone call or email.

We are using MODx, a content management system. I starting reading the help documentation. I found a PHP code sample called ‘Web Lead’. It provides a simple form a visitor can fill out. Now, I need to add additional questions next to radio buttons and figure out how to send the form via email. I visited W3Schools to get started learning more about PHP. It turns out that it is very similar to JavaScript and the ContractPal RhinoScript I have used for developing Pals.

Java Language Specification

I found some interesting blogs today and one of them led me to discover the Java Language Specification. I am very interested in reading about API development. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading this specification. It reveals many insights into whys and hows for creating Java. I quote from the introduction, “It is intended to be a production language, not a research language, and so, as C. A. R.
Hoare suggested in his classic paper on language design, the design has avoided including new and untested features.” The book was available for download as a pdf and contains 684 pages.

Yellow Belt Passed

I passed the Java SE basic test today. I persevered and succeeded. I attempted the test about 6 times before I passed it. Onward and upward! Now I will prepare to challenge Sensai for my orange belt; Namaste.

I studied the Sun Javadocs collections today. There are 9 different interfaces for handling collections of objects. I continue to study Java Certification chapter 3 (Sierra Bates).

Passed Object Oriented Test

I took the Java Blackbelt object oriented test and passed! I gained 3 points toward a yellow belt. I was surprised that I passed because most of the questions seemed so difficult. I still struggle to understand casting and inheritance.

The objectives and questions test object oriented concepts using Java programming elements. The exams consist of questions that have been beta tested by other users. Questions are added to the real exam after enough users vote for it and the exam moderator approves it. Feedback can be used to indicate that a question is not appropriate for the exam level or have other difficulties. As needed, questions go into a repair zone for rewrite and are then reintroduced for further beta testing. Each test has an exam moderator that reviews questions and has the final say in whether questions are inserted into the ‘real exam’ question base.

I have contributed by writing comments suggesting corrections to grammatical errors and misspellings. These tests are useful because they are helping me to prepare for the real test. I like experimenting  with the code snippets and exploring the Javadocs to understand unfamiliar code API. I still haven’t passed the Java SE basic exam yet. I take beta tests, read the SCJP Certification book, read Sun’s Javadocs and review Sun’s Java tutorials.

A Java App of My Own

I continue to make the rounds each day visting JavaBlackBelt and Examulator. I have talked about my goal to learn Java and developers have recommended that I create an application. One of my friends recommended creating a “mad lib” application.

Requirements

1. Read a file and display a paragraph of text.
2. Insert words read from a file, insert the words where needed and display it.
3. Add a user input to dynamically insert content.
4. Add Junit code to test your code.

Overloading vs Overriding

Do I feel overloaded? You bet. We all have different roles derived from our relationships with each other. At work I’m told what to do; at home, I’m managing the well being of my family. Overloading a method means to use the same name as a method in a parent class and rearranging the order or changing the number of parameters passed into the method.

Ever had a decision overriden? I ask Dave a question about ContractPal (we have 3 Daves at work). Depending on which Dave I ask, determines what kind of answer I will get to my question. Each Dave is a competent programmer and has a work title with ‘developer’ in it. One Dave specializes in writing low level back end code, Dave two is a wiz at front-end technologies like Ajax and Dave three is an enterprise architect making sure everything works together. An overrided method will have the same name and parameters as its super class (parent) but its function is modified: it does something different. Java differentiates between parent and child methods using the this.method and super.method to differentiate the overrided methods just like I use a last name to differentiate between Dave A. and Dave M. and Dave W.

Staring at the Wall

Ok, so here I am staring at a wall again… I have wandered into javaBlackbelt and got my butt kicked. I’ve tried taking the “basic” Java SE test and failed twice with the same score of 50%. I keep finding that I’ve forgotten another yet “basic” fact about Java. The climb up the wall seems a bit tedious but I’m going over things again. It seems that I will not forget now that Constructors are named after the class it will ‘construct’, that it can use any access modifier including private. It can be chained together–wow, what a concept. Sometimes, my study of Java blows me away. Why did I ever think I could document code? Oh yeah, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Thank you Sensei, can I have my butt kicked again? Yasa! and everything spins out of control. Confidence? Well, I’ve got to pay the price–keep pushing.