Code Review: Gianina Juanga

Gia is like a whirlwind when she comes into the office. 

It's because she breezes in, all wind-blown and hectic, always in a hurry. A petite girl, she totes around a backpack that is twice as big as her torso, finds a niche all to her own and camps there the whole time without so much as a peep. A little bit later, you hear the rustle of a bag of chips or chocolate - a sure sign that Gia is in the groove of things, coding as if on fire.

Such is her commitment and passion for coding that she soldiers on throughout most nights, working. But on her code review on February 27, she came early and got right down to business, proving once and for all that this girl is one tough coding cookie!

We caught up with Gia after her code review and she gamely answered these questions:

1) What are you currently working on?

We have ipad apps that synchronize data with the server. I usually help out fixing any server side issues as reported by users or as results from testing new builds for the ipad apps.

2) Right, so what about this task in your project did you share on your code review? Please explain as you would to a non-technical loser like me. 

I talked about how the synchronization process works, and how I go about fixing issues. 

Basically the ipad sends data then the server will first authenticate the user. After the user has been authenticated, it will create a log file for the request which is useful for debugging, then validate data  and create or update objects as necessary.  There are also special charts on the ipad, which are sent as coordinates, so the server can recreate the chart image based on these coordinates. After the data has been sent up, the ipad then sends media files (images, videos, and voice memos), and the server will convert these files to the appropriate web formats and associate it with the corresponding objects. Finally, the server will send down data so it can be updated on the ipad.

3) That's awesome. Did anybody notice anything amiss on your code? 

There were none. I made sure that my code wasn't erroneous; obviously, it has passed quality control by the testers, as well as through debugging; so I'm sure there aren't any errors in it. Then I had it checked by Sir June before I presented it to everybody.

That's what's great about code reviews, it makes you mindful of your work. There were a few questions pertaining to my presentation, though, and I answered them as best I could. It was mostly clarifications about issue-fixing. I mean, how I do it, anyway. Everyone seemed to be on the same page as me, so I guess we do share a lot of similarities with how we handle stuff.


4) Were there any other cool ninja stuff you shared to the guys? Can you explain, please. 

I briefly discussed using Pycairo which you can use to programatically draw in Python. It allows you to work with the Cairo graphics library which has a lot of features for drawing 2D graphics. I used it to draw the chart images on the server. Also I showed them how you can use a REST client plugin on your browser, which you can use to replicate sending requests to the server which helps for debugging purposes.

5) Feelings, reactions while doing the code review?

Well, I learned a lot from my fellow devs and wish to learn more in the future. Also, I felt nice to be able to share my stuff to others. Hopefully they have learned something from me too.