Note: I will not answer any questions how to skip the objectives. If you are a developer I’m sure you figure it out within a few hours, but if not, you probably should complete them as you need a basic understanding how the system works.
Currently I’m testing Android APS with a second pump to get some experience with it and to evaluate if we can use it for our research. Apperently it has an education feature called „Objectives“ which teaches basic knowlege about the system. Even though I think the basic idea is very good, I don’t like the implementation. I thought I should try it, just in case there is something for me to learn but after I finished the first two of them (which were indeed interesting) they asked me questions about their documentation… Yes maybe people should be encuraged to read the documentation, but why should I know how to monitor children?? Or how the documentation author wants me to backup my data ??? And why are the answers written to confuse the reader instead of making the user think about the question ?!
I hated this part so much that I went straight to the AndroidAPS gitter room and complained to the developers that they are wasting my lifetime (and theirs too) with these questions. In my rage I totally fogot that they are nice people, spending their free time to write this application… Well, I apologized a short time later, but my point holds true. These „Objectives“ are a complete waste of time (in my optinion). We as developers are not in charge to keep stupid people from doing stupid things. We should warn them, but that’s all. We should not annoy other interested developers / scientists… I went to the code and looked up the answers to pass this objective.
Afterwards, I came back to my „maybe I should try it“ mode. But the next objective wanted me not only to enact some temporary basals by hand, but also to wait several days … Why should I do the looping by hand??? I do this 30 years by now. That’s what the looping software is supposed to do… And the waiting time serves no reason at all (in my oppinion). But the objective says I could ask for a shortcut code … and now the interesting part … when the developers *review my data* and think I’m experienced enough to start looping. I immediately entered rage mode again: „Who are they to decide if I’m good enough to use this software!“ I thought (Obviously this violated my professional integrity). But ok … I went back to the code to find out how they generate their shortcut code. After finding the respective code I used some standard tools to generete the code by myself. Done. It can be so easy 🙂
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I appreciate this article! I was recently diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, and have been working through the objectives in AndoridAPS. Since the time that you published this, the AndroidAPS developers have update the app to version 2.8, which has changed a few things. It appears that they no longer allow bypass codes of any kind to skip the objectives. You have to complete them. This has driven me almost to the point of switching to Apple so that I can use Loop. I have very limited programming skills, but I do have some. Is it possible to fork AndroidAPS and come out with a version that doesn’t set the devs up as pseudo-doctors that control how I treat my diabetes?
Hi Ken!
Yes you are right they changed their system. I had a chat with Milos and he wants me to not help other people to skip the objectives.
However, you can try it by yourself: You could fork his project and remove the objectives from the code-base. Or you install an old version, use the code-generation feature to complete the objectives and make an update afterwards…
You see, there are ways to work around it. But I guess you could simply complete the objectives. Except the silly questions, they are not too bad.
Cheers!
Hey thanks for writing this, helped me a lot.
„I had a chat with Milos and he wants me to not help other people to skip the objectives.“ but what did he say about the waiting times? and what about the senseless questions that you don’t learn anything from? Isnt he pushing people like you to create a fork that doesn’t have this kind of block in the process?
Well we didn’t go deeper into the actual issues of the objectives… Since then I think about it, how we could improve this part. I feel it is more a minor annoyance than a helpful tool at the moment. But I agree with ther argument that there should be something to teach the people how the program works. If you have any suggestions, feel free to share them with me, or the cummunity via github issues 🙂
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Hello, thanks for the tip! it worked great !
Big Brother controls like this this are just another way for developers and the technorati to play God. So tired of that attitude on the Apple side I decided to switch back to Android only to run into this. Fortunately I’m a systems programmer and I just disabled it completely in the source code.