Friday, June 20, 2014

I am still taking courses with Coursera. I finished the Web Applications Architecture class a month ago and am just now finishing the Digital Image and Video processing class. I complained the Web Applications Architecture class was too easy and they needed an advance class. They had us just copying code, not writing code on our own. The professor listened and he is offering an advance class this fall. Another student in the class alerted me to the fact that University of California-Berkeley was offering through Edx Engineering Software as a Service which used Ruby on Rails. It began not long after the Web Applications Architecture finished so it was the next logical step. The course is a much more intensive class and we do our own coding with pair programming on line. I have met people from all over the world this way. The course emphasizes Agile development which is new to me. The most new concept to me is doing testing using BDD and TDD. I had learned a little JUnit testing during my internship. We are currently using JUnit testing in Pattern-Oriented Software Architectures: Programming Mobile Services for Android Handheld Systems. Right now we are learning how to maintain legacy code in Engineering Software as a Service. I have realized what a rotten education I got at University of Texas at Arlington. I may have learned math, algorithms, and data structures but I did not learn good software engineering practices. I never heard about testing the whole time I was at UTA. When I was asked during job interviews what I did to test for bugs all I could say was put print statements in the code. I must have looked pretty stupid. I am taking the time now to learn some of what I should have learned. I did start a Machine Learning Course this week offered by Stanford University through Coursera. I do what to keep my math and algorithms skills current. All of the Coursera and Edx courses are much better taught than the classes I took at UTA. The professors lecture better and the courses are better organized. The professors seem really interested in teaching.

I am still stuck at home with a pulled leg muscle that won't healed. I can't walk far without the fear of falling. It is taking a long time to heal but I have to remember I was in pretty bad shape when I was first hospitalized. Besides broken down muscles I was lucky I didn't die of kidney failure. I am taking care of myself better now. Few skipped meals and no more throwing up food. Since I am no longer under stress like when I was going to UTA it is a lot easier to eat regular meals. I am still on the lookout for a telecommuting job. All of the many recruiters who call me say they only have on site jobs. I have found a few telecommuting jobs to apply to. The most recent phone interview I had with a hiring manager was for a Ruby on Rails remote position. They decided my Errai experience and class work in Ruby on Rails wasn't the experience they were looking for. She didn't ask me any specific technical questions. If I had made it through the first interview I would have been sent a coding challenge. I am wondering if I come off as some one hard to work with since software developers work in teams. I know being a woman in a male dominated profession it is harder to fit in but this last interview was with a woman.