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MS in Software Engineering, Technical Track Blog
 | Rahul is a full-time MS Software Engineering, Technical Track student. He loves traveling, trekking, swimming and is a complete movie buff. |
 | Anthony is a 2nd year part time student in the MS Software Engineering, Technical track program and works at OSIsoft as a Software Engineer. He loves spending time with his family, hiking, biking, gardening, cooking, and sometimes photography. |
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Suma is an alumna of the MS Software Engineering, Technical Track program. A Mechanical Engineering undergrad, she loves writing and is passionate about music, shopping and dogs. |
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Minh is a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft and alumnus of the MS Software Engineering program. He is also a Vietnamese community activist, a cat-lover and passionate fan of film music. |
 | Nick is a Software Engineer at Google and a first-year grad student at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. He loves hiking, gaming, and both really extremely good and extremely bad movies. |
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Flow Control
The past few weeks have been hectic for those of us taking Software Foundations as we try to avoid getting "Railed" by Rails and finish our personal projects on time in addition to finishing our group project on time (if it means anything, we did get a two day extension on personal projects -- for those of us working full time, this really means an 8 hour extension). The personal project is a project to redesign or design a website you are passionate about, it is due this Tuesday.
I am not sure how many of the students were as stressed out about this personal project as I was -- talking to people in class and out, it seemed like many were more or less in the same position. The first week and a half of the project, I kind of slacked off and spent a week playing Metal Gear Solid 4 beating Laughing Octopus and Ravaging Raven (yes!) -- the XP software methodology factors in a week of "slack" in your project time line -- I just decided to be proactive and take mine early, which didn't really work out for me and really regretted it later.
We were given 3 weeks to do the personal project. The last 1.5 weeks I have been "pushing stone" and spending time to learn Ruby on Rails and pump out a personal project. There have been sweat, tears, and blood (figuratively). The days have been 6:30am, out the bed, 7:15am at work till 5:00pm or 6:00pm, grab a quick dinner, rest a bit and work on the project till near 2:00am. On the nights in which I stayed up to the crack of dawn and spent time debugging stack traces from my project, I'd think back to that week of slack and think that Laughing Octopus really got the last laugh.
I'd spend lunch hours at my desk, working or reading for school -- actually, sitting at my desk at my lunch hour is nothing new, although I would typically browse slickdeals.net or the few blogs that I read.
Nevertheless, the journey thus far has been quite amazing (my personal project is nearly done, just need to finish the testing tasks). I am learning to adjust to the flow of work and school and space out the load. Sometimes during those long days and nights, I stayed up late because I had to finish or debug a feature -- other nights, I didn't want to go to bed because I was too excited about features in the project. Though there are "rumors" about those who work in software -- environments void of light and lunch as microwaveable hot pockets (or cup of noodles), I believe there are positives, and I believe that those feelings are what every software developer yearns for : finding that bug that totally confuses you, coding some really great algorithm or idea and seeing it pan out, etc...
I'd also like to comment that the students (and quality of them) are quite amazing. It doesn't feel totally like a school; it feels more like a group. I don't feel competition as much as I feel empowerment and encouragement from fellow students -- useful information and knowledge is exchanged freely without hesitation -- very different from my undergrad. Because of this, I'm really looking forward to semesters to come.
posted by Anthony Tang @ 3:05 PM
- Orientation 2009
- Gathering and Practicum
- The Fall semester ends as colorful as it should...
- What's been happening
- Opening the Door to Success
- All Good Things Must Come To an End
- Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley
- Architecture Midpoint:
- Attending the Class of 2008 Commencement Ceremony ...
- Wrapping up Construction III and Starting the Prac...
Howzit?
I am in South Africa. What is MS in Software Engineering?
mkhizefs@gmail.com
Hi Antony, I am curious, what did you do for personal project? Could you please explain more?