Well, graduation is here. It's been a long time since I posted, but hey, I've been busy! It's been a really crazy semester. However, just minutes ago I finished up my internship. The herd management program that I created was a really rewarding project. I still have several features to implement, but I knew ahead of time that I would likely not get everything done in a mere 216 hours. It's a fairly large application, at least from the perspective of one person creating it as their first major project outside of a classroom setting. I truly look forward to working on much larger scale projects as I begin my career.
As far as that is concerned, I believe the job search is going well. There are several opportunities out there and I have some positive discussions with more than one company. I hope to have something mutually beneficially turn into my first programmer career opportunity soon.
Classes went well this semester. I'm still on track to receive all A's and fulfill my goal of a 4.0 GPA upon graduation. It's been a bit of a whirlwind spending all my free time working on the internship and bouncing back and forth between the PHP, C#, VB, ASP.NET and JavaScript/jQuery languages. There are so many similarities to be found amonst all of them, but yet...not.
In the end now, I'm just so eager to apply my new skills and put all of my effort into a job with a company. I've waited two years for this (actually, much more than that if you count how long I've wanted to be a programmer) and I'm excited to get going. My last class date should be May 10th and then it's on to the working world again!
Friday, April 29, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Is that a light?
The semester is already half finished. I've yet to get used to how fast the semesters can go at MATC. Graduation is right around the corner and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Classes seem to be going well. I'm really enjoying learning advanced JavaScript and AJAX techniques. It's fun being able to know the type of things that help bring a website to life. While I kept my own website fairly simple by design on the initial roll-out, I wouldn't have minded added a bit more to it in terms of interactivity. I hope to be able to do that this summer once school is done.
I will also be busy finally getting to personal projects I've had my mind on. The first would be a contact database for my wife and I, as well as a video game and movie database for myself. I'd also like to create a few things that are interactive for the kids. Even if it's something as simple as a matching or memory game, it'll be fun for me to create it. And if I use pictures of the family, it'll be more fun for the kids.
The rest of school is going well also. I'm really enjoying C# and ASP.NET. In PHP we are going over frameworks and testing environments as well as version control systems.
The internship is going great and is lots of fun. I finally installed PHP, Apache and MySQL on the PC at my brother-in-law's farm so he can start to tinker with the program as it's in progress. It's finally started to take some shape of it's finished self, but also has a long way to go. I look forward to finishing it, either during the semester or this summer when the internship is over.
Next week is spring break at school and I plan to take the time to put a lot of hours into the internship, continue looking for full-time jobs (which I started last week) and build my first PC. It should be a busy week.
Classes seem to be going well. I'm really enjoying learning advanced JavaScript and AJAX techniques. It's fun being able to know the type of things that help bring a website to life. While I kept my own website fairly simple by design on the initial roll-out, I wouldn't have minded added a bit more to it in terms of interactivity. I hope to be able to do that this summer once school is done.
I will also be busy finally getting to personal projects I've had my mind on. The first would be a contact database for my wife and I, as well as a video game and movie database for myself. I'd also like to create a few things that are interactive for the kids. Even if it's something as simple as a matching or memory game, it'll be fun for me to create it. And if I use pictures of the family, it'll be more fun for the kids.
The rest of school is going well also. I'm really enjoying C# and ASP.NET. In PHP we are going over frameworks and testing environments as well as version control systems.
The internship is going great and is lots of fun. I finally installed PHP, Apache and MySQL on the PC at my brother-in-law's farm so he can start to tinker with the program as it's in progress. It's finally started to take some shape of it's finished self, but also has a long way to go. I look forward to finishing it, either during the semester or this summer when the internship is over.
Next week is spring break at school and I plan to take the time to put a lot of hours into the internship, continue looking for full-time jobs (which I started last week) and build my first PC. It should be a busy week.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Champions!
Congrats to the Green Bay Packers! Admittedly I was anxious throughout the entire game, but in the end they came out on top. What an exciting game to watch.
School is going fine so far. I've turned in my first projects for all of my classes but one already. PHP, ASP.NET, AJAX and C# are all going well. And so far they aren't overwhelming me with their time commitment. This is good considering all my other free time is going into the internship.
I'm enjoying doing the internship. It's fun to put together all the different things I've learned over the past semesters into one large project. It keeps me learning as I gain more experience on how to plan a project and implement it. I keep realizing that only experience can teach me how to avoid certain pitfalls or see a bit further down the path than I currently can. I knew the project would be a large one, even though when describing it, it doesn't seem like there's really that much to it! The planning, coding, presentation, etc, all take a lot of time. And as it's my first real "large" project being done solely by myself, it's taking some time.
I'm also enjoying it because it's for my brother-in-law. Knowing that it will be useful to him and the things I am building will be tools he uses are of motivation as well.
As far as the more techinical side, I've decided to write the project in PHP on a MySQL database. There is also JavaScript involved as well as the standard HTML and CSS aspects. As I learn more throught this final semester, I will surely be implementing those things at the end.
While I'd preferred to have done the project in .NET, since I'd like to work in that environment after graduation, PHP provided me with the best option right now. I decided that if I no longer have the .NET tools available to me that I need after graduation, I won't be able to support this project in the future and I don't find that option acceptable. I can't guarantee that the express (and free) versions of Visual Studio will meet my needs. So that is why I'm going with PHP as everything I need (PHP, MySQL, Apache) should be free to use for the foreseeable future. We also do a lot less hands on coding in the PHP program at MATC, and I find this is a good way to keep my skills sharp there.
Classes are gearing up for their Project 2 topics now. Between working on those, I plan to keep plugging away on the internship (I have nearly 70 of the 216 hours required in already after week 4 of the semester). I hope to stay on track with my grades from past semesters and meet the internship requirements a few weeks before the semester is over (although I will continue to work on it until it is finished if it is not completed).
School is going fine so far. I've turned in my first projects for all of my classes but one already. PHP, ASP.NET, AJAX and C# are all going well. And so far they aren't overwhelming me with their time commitment. This is good considering all my other free time is going into the internship.
I'm enjoying doing the internship. It's fun to put together all the different things I've learned over the past semesters into one large project. It keeps me learning as I gain more experience on how to plan a project and implement it. I keep realizing that only experience can teach me how to avoid certain pitfalls or see a bit further down the path than I currently can. I knew the project would be a large one, even though when describing it, it doesn't seem like there's really that much to it! The planning, coding, presentation, etc, all take a lot of time. And as it's my first real "large" project being done solely by myself, it's taking some time.
I'm also enjoying it because it's for my brother-in-law. Knowing that it will be useful to him and the things I am building will be tools he uses are of motivation as well.
As far as the more techinical side, I've decided to write the project in PHP on a MySQL database. There is also JavaScript involved as well as the standard HTML and CSS aspects. As I learn more throught this final semester, I will surely be implementing those things at the end.
While I'd preferred to have done the project in .NET, since I'd like to work in that environment after graduation, PHP provided me with the best option right now. I decided that if I no longer have the .NET tools available to me that I need after graduation, I won't be able to support this project in the future and I don't find that option acceptable. I can't guarantee that the express (and free) versions of Visual Studio will meet my needs. So that is why I'm going with PHP as everything I need (PHP, MySQL, Apache) should be free to use for the foreseeable future. We also do a lot less hands on coding in the PHP program at MATC, and I find this is a good way to keep my skills sharp there.
Classes are gearing up for their Project 2 topics now. Between working on those, I plan to keep plugging away on the internship (I have nearly 70 of the 216 hours required in already after week 4 of the semester). I hope to stay on track with my grades from past semesters and meet the internship requirements a few weeks before the semester is over (although I will continue to work on it until it is finished if it is not completed).
Monday, January 3, 2011
Goals
The new semester is right around the corner. I received an A in each class again last semester. That means I've got a full 4.0 going into my last semester. My goal is to hold that GPA until I graduate in May. I do not think that achievement will come easily, but I will do my best to earn it.
The winter break is rapidly coming to a close. This week is finding me spending a lot of time on my internship. I am creating a software program for my brother-in-law's farm. The program will track information for animals including their pedigree. A family tree, so to speak, will also be created for the animals. Based on their information, which includes monthly milk testing results, a variety of reports will be created. I've begun the planning stages by meeting with my brother-in-law and drafting up some Use Case diagrams and other planning documents. I plan to meet with him later this week to gather more planning information. I look forward to getting into the other stages including user interface and coding. Of course, I still need to do more research regarding if I will be doing the project in PHP using MySQL or in .NET and another database structure. As of now, I'm guessing it will be in PHP since I can easily obtain the tools once I'm no longer a student should I want to edit and/or maintain the application.
This brings up another goal. For the internship I need to put in at least 216 hours. I hope to have that accomplished a couple of weeks before the end of the semester. Since the work is for a member of the family, I can put in as much time as I need to when I need to. Hopefully this allows me to get the work done early. I plan to also support and/or add to the program after the internship is over also.
Everything else for the coming semester is nearly in order, including books, etc. I'm looking forward to learning more things. But I am also very anxious to apply what I have learned to real world projects, such as the one for my internship. I also have had projects on the backburner for personal use and cannot wait to get to those after graduation.
The winter break is rapidly coming to a close. This week is finding me spending a lot of time on my internship. I am creating a software program for my brother-in-law's farm. The program will track information for animals including their pedigree. A family tree, so to speak, will also be created for the animals. Based on their information, which includes monthly milk testing results, a variety of reports will be created. I've begun the planning stages by meeting with my brother-in-law and drafting up some Use Case diagrams and other planning documents. I plan to meet with him later this week to gather more planning information. I look forward to getting into the other stages including user interface and coding. Of course, I still need to do more research regarding if I will be doing the project in PHP using MySQL or in .NET and another database structure. As of now, I'm guessing it will be in PHP since I can easily obtain the tools once I'm no longer a student should I want to edit and/or maintain the application.
This brings up another goal. For the internship I need to put in at least 216 hours. I hope to have that accomplished a couple of weeks before the end of the semester. Since the work is for a member of the family, I can put in as much time as I need to when I need to. Hopefully this allows me to get the work done early. I plan to also support and/or add to the program after the internship is over also.
Everything else for the coming semester is nearly in order, including books, etc. I'm looking forward to learning more things. But I am also very anxious to apply what I have learned to real world projects, such as the one for my internship. I also have had projects on the backburner for personal use and cannot wait to get to those after graduation.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Spring Classes
In early November I was able to register for my Spring classes. They are as follows:
- IT Programmer/Analyst Internship
- AJAX and JavaScript Web Development
- Professional PHP Web Applications
- Web Application Development Using ASP.NET
- C# Programming In Visual Studio.NET
My C# class is going to be on the west side of Madison instead of at the Truax campus. This will be a nice change since the drive in will be shorter for me as it is my only class that day. And it will also be nice to see what that facility is like.
For those following my website (www.davidendres.com) and/or blog my remember that I was planning to take MATC's Ruby on Rails class. Over the course of the last semester I've decided to focus my studies a bit more and the .NET direction was the way I decided to do that. Although admittedly I did want to also get some mobile programming experience by signing up for Google Tools and Android Development, but that was not possible due to scheduling conflicts with other classes. I'm sure once I'm in the middle of Spring that I will realize that 15 credits is plenty anyhow! Besides, I can always come back for more classes after graduation.
Making Decisions
The semester is rapidly coming to a close. It's probably been my most challenging one so far. I'm looking forward to a few weeks off before starting up again in mid-January.
Over the course of this semester I'm finally realizing what I want to do after graduation. While I'm still open to just about anything I've been learning how to do at MATC, I'd most like to work with something in the .NET framework. I think there are several reasons for this. First, Visual Basic came fairly easily to me. Some of this is because of my prior experience with VBA in Excel which introduced me to a bit of Visual Basic, Object-Oriented programming and the editor environment as well. Second, I've really enjoyed working in the Visual Studio environment. It makes it so easy to see if you're making a mistake and structures your application in a nice visual way. I also like the ability to trouble shoot your bugs by stepping through code at run time. I know Visual Studio isn't the only environment to do things like this, but I've become comfortable working with it. One of the last reasons is just the intangibles. I've liked using Visual Basic. I look forward to learning C# and ASP.NET as well next semester. At some point I knew I had to make a decision and this just feels like the right one.
PHP is still an option for me though. I do like the flexibility and freedom the language seems to offer over .NET. And with more experience I can see it being a very powerful language for me.
I am also in the process of finding an internship for the Spring semester. I have started looking for part time jobs again. Ideally these would be in the .NET framework, but I would gladly work in any type of website creation or PHP environments too. I'm not restricting myself at all. Currently, I plan to create an application for my brother-in-law's farm for my internship. This is an application I will be creating regardless at some level for him, but the timing and scope will depend on my job search in the next few weeks.
The next few weeks are going to be busy ones, as always. The break will be a welcome one, but it will also find me busy catching up on my To Do list around the house, watching the kids, celebrating Christmas and gearing up for another semester.
Over the course of this semester I'm finally realizing what I want to do after graduation. While I'm still open to just about anything I've been learning how to do at MATC, I'd most like to work with something in the .NET framework. I think there are several reasons for this. First, Visual Basic came fairly easily to me. Some of this is because of my prior experience with VBA in Excel which introduced me to a bit of Visual Basic, Object-Oriented programming and the editor environment as well. Second, I've really enjoyed working in the Visual Studio environment. It makes it so easy to see if you're making a mistake and structures your application in a nice visual way. I also like the ability to trouble shoot your bugs by stepping through code at run time. I know Visual Studio isn't the only environment to do things like this, but I've become comfortable working with it. One of the last reasons is just the intangibles. I've liked using Visual Basic. I look forward to learning C# and ASP.NET as well next semester. At some point I knew I had to make a decision and this just feels like the right one.
PHP is still an option for me though. I do like the flexibility and freedom the language seems to offer over .NET. And with more experience I can see it being a very powerful language for me.
I am also in the process of finding an internship for the Spring semester. I have started looking for part time jobs again. Ideally these would be in the .NET framework, but I would gladly work in any type of website creation or PHP environments too. I'm not restricting myself at all. Currently, I plan to create an application for my brother-in-law's farm for my internship. This is an application I will be creating regardless at some level for him, but the timing and scope will depend on my job search in the next few weeks.
The next few weeks are going to be busy ones, as always. The break will be a welcome one, but it will also find me busy catching up on my To Do list around the house, watching the kids, celebrating Christmas and gearing up for another semester.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Halfway Point
It's hard to believe it, but the first round of exams are mostly behind me. As always, they were very challenging. I still have to take the XML one and I'm sure that'll be just as tough.
I've gotten the second round of projects done and turned in for most classes also. As I've mentioned before, I really enjoy doing the projects. The projects are finally starting to get bigger in scope, which is great. For example, the latest PHP project had us playing a game of tic-tac-toe and storing the game to a database. Then we needed to be able to choose which game we wanted to replay and show a replay of that game, move by move.
The next round of projects has us building a shopping cart (PHP) and retrieving and working with data from a database (VB.NET). While we've been reading databases in PHP since last semester this is the first time we're really getting into doing that in VB.NET. It's similar, but different and I'm looking forward to it. While these projects are in many ways small in scope compared to those in the real world, they are definitely the types of smaller building blocks that we'll be doing someday on a professional level.
So far I'm still on track to keep my 4.0 GPA. It's getting tougher each semester though as the classes get more in-depth. It's my goal to keep that GPA until I graduate, but I know realistically it will be a tough goal to accomplish.
Last week was the IT Career Fair on campus. It was great to visit the booths of many of the areas companies. While several are not looking to hire programmers in the .NET or PHP areas at this time, it was still great to learn more about them and talk to their representatives. There were also some other companies that had potential positions and I look forward to talking with them more in the future.
It's getting to the point in the semester where there is no longer a clear busy period and then a lull. It's basically a fairly constant busy, yet manageable period. This should continue until early December when final projects are due and final exams come up. I can't believe how fast the semester is going, but I'm still enjoying learning everything they can throw at, so I guess that's a good sign!
I've gotten the second round of projects done and turned in for most classes also. As I've mentioned before, I really enjoy doing the projects. The projects are finally starting to get bigger in scope, which is great. For example, the latest PHP project had us playing a game of tic-tac-toe and storing the game to a database. Then we needed to be able to choose which game we wanted to replay and show a replay of that game, move by move.
The next round of projects has us building a shopping cart (PHP) and retrieving and working with data from a database (VB.NET). While we've been reading databases in PHP since last semester this is the first time we're really getting into doing that in VB.NET. It's similar, but different and I'm looking forward to it. While these projects are in many ways small in scope compared to those in the real world, they are definitely the types of smaller building blocks that we'll be doing someday on a professional level.
So far I'm still on track to keep my 4.0 GPA. It's getting tougher each semester though as the classes get more in-depth. It's my goal to keep that GPA until I graduate, but I know realistically it will be a tough goal to accomplish.
Last week was the IT Career Fair on campus. It was great to visit the booths of many of the areas companies. While several are not looking to hire programmers in the .NET or PHP areas at this time, it was still great to learn more about them and talk to their representatives. There were also some other companies that had potential positions and I look forward to talking with them more in the future.
It's getting to the point in the semester where there is no longer a clear busy period and then a lull. It's basically a fairly constant busy, yet manageable period. This should continue until early December when final projects are due and final exams come up. I can't believe how fast the semester is going, but I'm still enjoying learning everything they can throw at, so I guess that's a good sign!
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