But first, a recap of Spring's classes. As far as programming languages, Visual Basic.NET and PHP have both been great, but are very different experiences. PHP brings a more complete experience to me, as I can see how things are developed in the database end and then it through all the way to a website design. I find knowing that one person can easily and quickly write a website to be very rewarding. VB.NET on the other hand is quite different. The class seems to be a slower paced, more structured approach to development and seems to be more geared for a team environment. But the idea of working on project large in scope is an exciting concept. At this point I cannot decide if I like working with PHP or VB.NET any more than the other.
Learning SQL has been great. Not only is learning how to use Oracle good experience, SQL is very useful in my PHP class as well while working with MySQL databases.
Object-Oriented Design with UML has been useful in more ways than I had anticipated. Not only did it continue what we started in Intro to Database, but it taught us the concepts of OOD which comes in useful in seeing the larger picture of programming an application. It also has helped understand concepts in PHP and VB.NET. The last month of the semester is seeing us work as a group to form a website storyboard for a local company. Presentations start in a week and I think our group has been doing a great job.
Computer Hardware has been a very diverse class and covered lots of important topics. I will definitely be able to use that knowledge at home and in helping others.
I have signed up for Summer and Fall classes. They are as follows:
- Job Search Preparation (Summer)
- Dreamweaver (Summer)
- Advanced VB.NET (Fall)
- Advanced PHP and MySQL (Fall)
- Object Oriented Systems Analysis (Fall)
- Advanced Web Development XML (Fall)
- Linux Server (Fall) (On wait list since it is not a required class for me)
I'm looking forward to all of the classes. I hope I will be able to get into the Linux Server class as this will be very beneficial to me for PHP courses and potentially my career.
As I mentioned earlier, what I've learned in my courses has gotten me excited to do some projects on my own over the summer. I've been asked to create a website for a business a friend of the family owns. The goal is to have this project done by August.
I also plan to build my own website. I own the domain name davidendres.com (and daveendres.com). I plan to put both person and school/career information on this website. Many of the pages will initially be standard HTML designs. However, I do plan to use PHP to create a section on the site that displays family recipes. I will store the recipes in a MySQL database and family members (or other visitors) can search for recipes or look them up by name/category. I'm very excited to get this project up and running, but I know it will be a lot of work and require careful planning. I sincerely hope I do not run out of time this summer to do this project as it will be a good test of what I've learned in my first year here. Also, it should be very helpful to family members who need to find a recipe!
Finally, time permitting this summer, I plan to build a database of contact information. This will only be accessible on our home network but will likely be run with PHP and MySQL. Access is a secondary option. With the success of this database, I plan to also build one for our video game and movie collections at home.
I realize I have an ambitious summer and fall ahead of me (I will also be watching our children over the summer instead of them being at daycare), but I'm really looking forward to it.
