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.