Mobile and Professionalism for Students

Yesterday, at the request of their teacher Suman Banerjee, I presented a view of what it’s like to be a professional programmer to a class of Computer Sciences students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The focus of the talk was “Mobile & Professionalism,” since the class’ title is “Foundations of Mobile Systems and Applications.”

The slides are available on Speakerdeck and auxiliary information is available on my github page.

In essence, my talk was split into two sections: Mobile Development & Professional Development. Given only 75 minutes to talk, I had to pick just a few topics for the entirety.

I started with an in-depth discussion of the MVC pattern and how it applies to native applications. Upon asking the class who had heard of this pattern, only about half of the hands went up, so I certainly had my work cut out for me.

Once MVC was covered, I dove into the “Professionalism” part of the talk. While I touched on some agile practices like pair programming, testing, and automation, I also discussed ways to find and land a dream job. For example, just attending a single conference as a student is probably sufficient for finding “a” job. Blogging, tweeting, using Github, attending user groups… those will help them find a dream job.

Anyway, if you’re a teacher reading this, I’d be happy to speak in front of your class. If you’re not in the Madison area, perhaps we can figure out some remote video solution.

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