The Opinionated Programmer

So, as of right now, there are three or so weeks left of school. I am starting to get excited and also worried. Things feel like they almost aren’t real right now. For the past five years of my life, I have had college be the focus of my life and that is going to change very soon. It is an exciting thing, but also change is always somewhat scary, but I know I will survive whatever is going to be thrown at me.

As far as work goes, things have been going really well. I have a project that I can close out for the most part, and another few that I get to introduce to my replacement and get him in the swing of things. Also, I have a great independent gig right now that is great. I am so very great full for everything that I have learned here at the university both in terms of technical skills and real life experience knowing how an office works and what to expect.

As I move on, I will always have this job to look back at that prepared me for future employment and the people that helped me get to this stage in my life. I am sure that I wouldn’t be the same person if I hadn’t worked here.

On a final note, I would like to say congratulations to two of my colleagues who both have received great jobs for after the semester is over. Congrats guys, I wish you both the best.

I am in my final semester now at school, and it has been time to go job hunting. This has been an interesting experience thus far as I just can’t seem to find what I want. I want to find a job in web development that allows me to stay in the Midwest. I would prefer to stay in Eau Claire if possible, but that isn’t the deciding factor on finding a job. I really want to stick with web development as I have been doing it for about 3 years now, and it is something I have grown to enjoy. I have worked with many great people and mentors, and I feel that web development is one of the areas that I feel I can continue to enjoy. I don’t want to find a 9-5 job that I don’t like and I think web development will help. It is something that I can already wrap my head around, and I wouldn’t have a hard time moving from my current job where I do semi-professional work into a professional setting.

The moral of why I am talking about this however is that I am having a hard time finding a job in web development. I can find gigs just fine, but I want to find a company where I don’t have to go through the process of finding a gig every few weeks or months just to keep working and this is the problem that I am running into. I guess I just have to continue putting myself out there and hope that I can find something that I want to do.

Lately, I have been finishing up classes for the semester, and doing a lot of studying, and a lot of finishing up projects. I have learned a few very interesting things both about myself, and about finishing up projects. First off, I have learned that sometimes glossing over the simple things can hurt you in the long run. I have been noticing lately that I tend to get the integrated idea of things. For example, if you were to give me a bolt and a nut, I would completely understand that they are to go together, and because of that, they can hold something together. However, if you were to ask me what the purpose of either one of the individual pieces was for, I would tell you that they are to be used with their pair to complete a goal. This type of thinking has been hurting me lately. So, I have been slowing myself down when I learn something, and asking myself, what is the purpose of all of these things individually, before asking the question about what the process of them are together.

The other thing that I have been learning lately, especially with projects, is that every issue can be in one of three different categories. They can either be something you can plan for, something you should have planned for, or something that you couldn’t have planned for. I have had a lot of these issues come up lately. First off, I have gotten ahead of some issues, but asking myself, and then the client, what happens in case A, or is this situation ever possible. Those types of questions have been helping focus how one of the projects I have been working on have been going. I have been able to figure out the scope of this project earlier, so I don’t end up doing extraneous things that aren’t needed.

The other type of situation, those you should have planned for is something that I have been noticing with a project that I am working on that is nearing completion. There are a few things that have come up in meetings, where we both looked at each other, and were confused about how something was working, and it ended up being an earlier miscommunication and if I would have at that time, asked about specific edge cases like I am now doing with the newer project I am working on, these problems would not have come up. This was a failure on my part that I have learned from that has helped me a lot.

Lastly, there are those cases that you can’t plan for. These are the situations that are never fun to see. The other day, I was out at a clients, installing the completed version of a project for them, and an issue with the password for their local database had been recently changed, so the program wasn’t able to connect to it as desired. This wasn’t a hard thing to fix, but it was an example of one of those issues that was thought should be fine, as the database was used, and it was shown working to us, where something as obscure as the password being changed so the connection wasn’t getting made wasn’t something we had thought of, and the fact that it was a local database meant that the password that was used previously to connect would just get changed. This is an example of my least favourite issues, the one that shows up while you are trying to show your product, but at the same time, these are the issues that I don’t mind dealing with. I like thinking on my feet, and figuring things out while the pressure is on, is something I would like to say I am great at, and I feel it really makes me use those critical thinking skills that sometimes like to try and hide away.

Anyway, That is what I have been doing in the last month or so. Over the next few weeks I will be heading down to Argentina and Uraguy, so expect an update after I get back, but probably not one before I leave.

In the last few weeks, I have had a lot of music in my life. I am in a mens choir, and we have had a few small performances in the last few weeks here. (Including another one this evening)

In between my bouts of singing lately, I have been doing some awesome things at work. The huge project that I have been working on for a while has the potential to be done very soon and I know I am not the only one that is happy for this. While working on trying to finish up that project, I have been working on my skills in problem solving. We have been finding other small issues with this program, and have been trying to figure out those interesting solutions because we are trying to get things done. Now, I am not saying that we are copping out and finding the quick fix answers. I am saying that we are running into those issues that normally you say hey, I know how to do this, but this wasn’t something that we thought of at the beginning of the project, but now, you have the majority of the project up and running, how do I implement this without changing the majority of things that have been finished. So, that has been interesting lately.

Also, I have gotten a new, from the void, project which I have been waiting for. I haven’t really had a project that I got to start and finish by myself yet at work, they have all been other projects that people have worked on doing maintenance, or continuing development from where they left off. Well, I shall let you know how that project will be treating me in a few weeks.

As for school, I have my first CS assignment due. It was to implement and mirror a Linux shell for the most part. The project turned out to be quite interesting. We had to demo the project today, and we did pretty well, and were satisfied with our results. That is what has been happening with me the last few weeks.