Remember One Another

Today we moved towards getting the user account registration process finished. It’s been several days coming, but after yesterday’s work on Hudson, we finally settled (for the time being) our configuration and build issues.

Mr. Chandler took a look at the code I wrote on my day at home last week, and suggested a number of refactorings. For those who don’t know, ‘refactoring’ is a coding term meaning redesign of the code to make it easier to run. read, and reuse. He also suggested I remove several errors.

This done, we found that the link produced by our code and sent to the new user still did not behave properly. Instead of accessing an almost-empty view page and triggering a registration process, it did nothing at all before sending the user onto the login page.

We quickly realized this was due to a filter active in the project that prevents any unauthorized user from navigating to a restricted page. Since all pages are default restricted, and the filter redirects to the login page, it was intercepting the browser en-route to the registration page.

So Mr. Chandler fixed it. I am ignorant on matters of String splitting and regular expressions, but somehow Mr. Chandler modified our filter class to exclude a list of paths from the filter process, allowing the link access to the registration page.

Yesterday and today’s problems demonstrated how we often have to work through issues that, while preventing us from moving any farther in our envisioned site design, force us to prepare now for what would otherwise become major hindrances in the future. We are tempted to be discouraged, but a bit of reflection reminds us that we still got a lot of important things done — they just may not be what we planned to get done. Hopefully we will deal with problems while they are still in seedling form, before they have a chance to crash servers.

After today’s work was done, Mr. Chandler and I drove up to the North Side of Atlanta, grabbed a bite to eat, and attended a meeting of the Atlanta Java User’s Group, affectionately referred to as “AJUG.” I have fond memories of this group. The first time I attended the monthly Tuesday evening session, they gave away free T-shirts, allowing me to proudly announce myself to the world as a new Java User.

Today’s Note for Dense Summer Interns: Do not try to test code that requires web access while driving through downtown Atlanta with a wireless box. All the wireless enabled coffee shops in the world won’t help you get online when they are whizzing by at 75 miles per hour.

Clothing Tip of the Day: Be a computer programmer and you can wear whatever you like. At the Java User’s Group, there were in attendance a wide range of accouterments, from t-shirts, shorts, and sandals to ties, pants, and dress shoes. The only requirement in a programmer’s the dress code is a cell phone, blackberry, i-phone, or laptop that the owner of which must frequently glance at, type on, or cause to make loud beeps. Thank goodness I brought my Linux-boasting laptop!