Cody Codes Code

This week, our team finished most of the major features of our application, CONVEE - aside from front end style components and changes to the user settings page, our application is almost feature complete. I am proud of our group for our accomplishments and making it this far in the program. Additionally, we also finished updating our ILP pages and put together our video outline for the project video. As I have a good amount of experience now in video production (I have edited almost every single required video in each class I've taken so far, both solo and group), I am looking forward to producing this one. This week's topic covered job interviews. I don't have much experience as an interviewer myself, but one of the tips I received from my manager about interviews was to answer each question confidently, even if you feel like you don't know the answer. I feel as if that approach can backfire at times, however it's always good to approach a new or unknown situa...

This week, we finished our ILP portfolios and turned in the final versions of our resume and cover letter. My group also completed the first part of the capstone report. I'll admit that creating a portfolio showcasing my past work was not at the top of my priority list when I first started studying computer science, although at this point in my educational and professional career I've learned how important it is to have such a portfolio. Like other creative professions, having a solid body of work to show to a potential employer, or even for personal documentation is one of the best ways to display your talents as an engineer. Also, all the assignments I've completed during my academic career, both at CSUMB and elsewhere, have given me a good start to my portfolio. I tend to prefer classic, plain styling like  Brian Kernighan's  home page (he has a pretty nice portfolio too), although I've come to appreciate highly stylized portfolios that make use of WebKit ani...

This week, our group continued working on the current iteration of our capstone project. Sebastian has done a fantastic job so far setting up the baseline code/master branches for both the client and server, and we have a good starting point to expand on. Progress is going well and development continues. For our group meeting this week, there were several items/tips/good practices from the "Effective Meetings" week that we followed:  1. The purpose of the meeting was clear: similar to a Scrum meeting, we discussed current work in progress and what was finished last week, along with any technical issues in development. 2. Agenda was clear and on topic. 3. Action items were discussed and assigned. Since I've been back to work in the office and lab and attending daily scrum meetings for software test over the phone, I've been making note of what I think is effective regarding teleconferences and trying to implement them into our own group meetings.  Resume ...

This week was the official start of CST 499 and our group's capstone project. I'm working on an AAG application along with Abby Packham and Sebastian (Juan) Delgado, and our project is off to a good start. For this week's reading, I read an article on how to conduct effective meetings. As a full-time software test engineer, I attend daily scrum meetings about thirty minutes long and have attended many types of work meetings, both long, short, formal, and informal, in the almost three years I've been at my current job. The most common pitfall I witness in meetings is getting sidetracked and losing precious meeting time, or conducting meetings that weren't necessary. I find this tends to happen less at work during large meetings that feel more like announcements or seminars and more often with groups of two to twenty people. However, in my career as a student, this has happened in meetings all the time. Although the majority of meetings I've attended at...