I’m well on my way with a Hello World 2.0 (Blog).  I feel lame writing a blog to learn the language, but it’s a well defined application and lets me focus on the code.   While I’m finding the MVC framework to be a major bonus, there’s still a lot of auto-generated .NET boiler plate all over the place.  Definitely not as lean as some other modern frameworks, but hey it’s ASP.

I think MVC Preview 2 was just released so there’s not a ton of information out there.  Scott Hanselman has some really helpful screencasts.  There’s also a helpful tutorial that got me started at ASPAlliance.

Psychologists have studied how people have a higher opinion of their own abilities than others do. When they do something well, they tend to attribute it to an inherent trait. “I figured out how to write this tricky bit of code; I’m smart”. When they do something wrong, they tend to think it’s a fleeting condition “I forgot to check in that file. Silly me, I’ll remember next time.” Bringing their perception in line with reality will deal them an emotional blow. This is especially true of those whose self-worth is wrapped up in their programming ability, something that’s pretty common among those driven to become the best programmers. Don’t be surprised if they spend the rest of the afternoon staring at their screen in shock, feeling as if all their hard work and cleverness is unappreciated — even if you spent most of the review pointing it out and praising it.

This hit home hard, and I’m sure it hits close to home for others.  I often think about the mistakes that I make, I try and take some time to reflect on them in order to learn from them.  However, I am guilty of touting my triumphs and downplaying my failings.  We’re only human right?  Now thanks to this article, and it is the articles fault…   Any time I make a mistake I’m going to feel compelled to analyze whether I should knock myself down a peg for it, or attribute it to human nature.  I’d much rather accept that we all make mistakes and attempt to learn from it.

I do worry a lot about how others perceive my work.  I’m sure that each and every defect I produce has at least some bearing on their opinion of me, even if I’m only loosely connected to said defect.  I have yet to decide whether all of this stems from a lack of confidence or just a healthy sense of reality.  I’ll go with the latter.

• Went to NY
  • The Central Park Zoo is pretty cool
  • Polar bears are awesome, this one was doing laps and scratching his back on the wall
  • The Waldorf=Astoria is nice, but not nice enough to justify the price.. there was a big model competition while I was there.  I’ve never seen so much luggage in all my life.  I now wish I had taken a picture, it was unreal.
  • A lot of walking around town, which was fun
• Finished semester last week
• Got a 3.9! Whee!
• Thoughts on the semester….
  • Operating Systems course was weak.  The professor had a distributed systems background, but was pretty light on OS knowledge.  However, the book was great.. reminder to self.. read the book in free time
  • Interactive Graphics was a lot of fun and a great learning experience..  The projects were very time consuming, it can be difficult to debug 3D programs.  Teacher provided most of the notes, which I like.. lets me focus on the lecture.
  • Comparative Programming Languages .. everyone was lost!  We got hung up on the implementation details of ML for a few weeks.  The course isn’t in depth enough that I could write my own compiler.. it’s also too in depth to be useful day to day.  The university should probably just ditch this and offer a course that provides a simple overview of language features along with an optional course in compilers.
  • Functional Programming was a really enlightening course.  It felt great to think about programs in a different way.  Everything recursive ends up being so elegant in a functional language.  Definitely going to keep my feet in the functional pool.
  • Statistics 2 .. it was statistics..
• Taking the summer off of school
• Landed an internship
  • Only been there a week, but definitely having fun
  • So far, writing some simple JavaScript

Speaking of JavaScript, there’s a fantastic series of videos on Yahoo Video with Douglas Crockford.  It takes a lot of time to watch them, but you will definitely learn something.

This ended up being really long, I should probably avoid bullet points from now on.

Starting JavaScript

The information is a little old on the site, but for picking up the basics it’s fine.  A quick read through and you’ll be well versed enough to start writing some simple things.

JavaScript Toolbox

This one was recommended to me.  I really liked the site, particularly the best practices portion.  As I said, JavaScript seems to have a million ways to do everything, so what’s the best way?  The site goes into detail on common JavaScript gotchas and programming for compatibility and maintainability.  The code samples are also very helpful.

As for ajax, there are some really good tutorials you can find at the bottom of wikipedia’s ajax page.  I’ll have to do some brainstorming in my free time and come up with an app to post.

I read this book as a primer to some more in depth titles. I was looking for a quick overview of the entity relationship model and this book served that purpose. I wanted something I could read and comprehend quickly over a weekend. The book is 144 pages and includes some simple exercises. I do wish the author had gone a little more into denormalization.

3D Math Primer for Graphics and Game Development

This semester I had a course in interactive computer graphics. Prior to the course I wanted to brush up on some of my trig and linear algebra skills. I read this book during the course of a vacation and was overall pretty happy with it. The author starts out with a good sense of humor, but the book loses that humor pretty quickly. Still, the content was pretty good and the provided exercises were extremely helpful.

Mathematics for 3D Game Programing & Computer Graphics

As per my usual approach, the previous book was meant to provide an overview. I bought this book with the intention of getting a little deeper into the math. Unfortunately I didn’t make it very far. The book has absolutely no personality. I felt like the entire book was just a set of bullet points with equations. I guess it just didn’t suit my learning style.

*NOTE: Neither of the graphics books had any content in direct relation to games outside of the math… I wonder how many extra copies get sold if you put “Game Development” in the title.

Operating Systems

This book is big, typical for a Deitel book. Weighing in at 1209 pages, I avoided taking it to class. However it has one major difference from the majority of Deitel books… It’s actually enjoyable to read! The material is presented really well and the code samples are crystal clear. There are a lot of neat little tidbits that help break up the material as well.

I have a number of books on deck at the moment, but not sure which I’m going to dig into next. Probably another book on databases to supplement Database Modeling Made Simple.

From the career fair I landed an interview, which I think went well. I did suffer a slight brain freeze on parts of the technical interview, but overall I thought it was positive. There’s nothing more frustrating than realizing an answer to a question on your way out or long after it’s been asked (ie 6/10 = 3/5, 6/15 = 2/5, 2/5+3/5 = 5/5)… I also got the normal questions that interview guides tell you to avoid answering at all costs (pay, current offers, etc). I had trouble stonewalling the interviewer on those questions, it’s just not in my personality. Hopefully they see my honesty and forthrightness as an asset. I should know in the next week or so if they feel I’m right for the job. (fingers crossed)

My career services department has sent my resume to a few places as well. Only one of which looked interesting. I’ll know in a few days whether I’ve been pre-selected for an interview.

In the mean time I’m continuing to seek out opportunities. One thing I’ve learned from this experience… don’t just look at Monster, Dice, etc. When I first began looking I got pretty worried as there wasn’t a lot in the area. Directly visiting an employer’s website produced a lot more results.

All in all, internship or no internship.. it’s been an enlightening experience. Interviewing reminded me of just how far I’ve come in the past few years. I can still remember my first real interview, what a disaster that was. I had no idea what I was doing!

There are so many books I currently want to sink my teeth into in order to better myself as a programmer. In particular I want to read Rapid Development and Writing Secure Code. As of late I’ve been tasked with writing a small application as part of an internship contest. Since this project will be read by other people, I feel I have a duty to provide clear documentation. Any recommendations on books for writing software specs/documentation?

One thing I’ve learned is that humor is essential to keeping the attention of an audience. The presentation doesn’t need to be punch line after punch line, but a joke or comical graphic tends to perk up the listeners. Sounds a little gimmicky, but when proportioned with information correctly it doesn’t come off as a ploy.

This goes back to my Professional Communications course, know your audience. If your audience is Google you can take a few comical liberties.