Its hard to admit, but I graduated high school back in 2010. Now nearly 6 years later, I’m finally entering my final semester at Iowa State and getting ready for the “Real World”.
College Ends.
The title of this post makes it seem like I didn’t learn anything during my time here at ISU, but that couldn’t be more false.
All the stress. The all nighters. The studying, reading, writing, and coding. All that work, and finally I can see the end, that beautiful piece of paper that says I didn’t flunk out from playing too many video games. A Bachelor’s Degree in Software Engineering. And while I’ll be the first to admit much of what I’ve learned could’ve been found on YouTube, that piece of paper is proof to future employers that I have a base knowledge that goes beyond some java tutorials and a wikipedia post on data structures. I wouldn’t trade the last half decade for anything because when I finally have that piece of paper I can call myself an Engineer.
The next question is: Being a piece-of-paper-carrying engineer or not, am I ready for the “Real World”? At the completion of my degree, have I been given the know-how needed to compete in the current job market?
Of that I’m not so sure. And thus this blog.
Learning Begins.
So assuming I don’t crash and burn in a huge ball of flaming projects and papers, I’m set to graduate this coming May, and soon after I hope to start my first “Big Boy” Job. As I look at job listings there is a startling lack of “Software Engineer” postings, instead I see things like: Android Developer, Mobile Expert, Web Builder, iOS Engineer etc. And when not looking at a platform you see: Ruby, Python, Closure, PHP, C#, Scala Developers.
In my 6 years of studying, I’ve had time to work on allot of side projects, as many people know I’m especially keen to Android development, but there is still a ton out there to learn. I may get that dream Android position, but Android won’t be around forever. Being an Engineer isn’t complete with a piece of paper, its taking the newest tools, and sometimes the old ones, and being able to build something new.
From now on my posts will document my progress on a few projects as I try and learn some new tools in the world of development. My hope is that you will join me in discussion along the way and we can be better because of it.
#devPunk
Things I’ll Be Learning.
- iOS: swift, Objective-C
- Unity3D: C#
- Android: Kotlin
I’ll post whatever resources I use, as well as code snip bits and all that.
Contact me on twitter if you have anything new for me to learn!
Keep On Learning
#devPunk
