This is me

So here's the deal. I don't really post to blogs. Well, not until now, obviously. My problem is that I don't see why anyone would find anything I could post to a blog interesting, so I haven't ever had one. Therefore, if you find yourself here and you are asking yourself, "Why would I want to read this stupid crap?" My answer to you is, you probably wouldn't. However, if you happen to be a CS major wanting to know what an entry level Software Engineering job is like, or if you just want something to do, feel free to give us a read.

As of right now, we are beginning week 4 of our 7 week training period, cutely named "Boot Camp." So far, we've covered Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, the Java Core (J2SE), Unit Testing, Aspect-Oriented Programming and J2EE. Last week, we finally got a peek inside the code we'll be working with on a daily basis, known as the Common Architecture. It's the working code base that our employer already has in production, and is the foundation that all of our work will build upon. Good stuff.

Looking back on the last three weeks, it seems like we've really been covering a lot of material. My main concern about myself is that I won't be able to retain all of the information we've been learning. Especially the stuff about OOAD because all of it was completely new to me. I've been trying very hard to refresh myself as we progress in order to keep from losing what we've been taught, because I see the importance of mastering this topic. In college I wasn't taught a single thing about Analysis and Design. If we were given a project, we would basically just start coding it. This almost always led to endless hours of frustration adapting the design of your code around or just trying to troubleshoot a horribly bloated method that does way too many important pieces of business logic. Analysis and Design, when done right, should leave the developer with a much better understanding of how to create the software and also leave them with a nice working set of artifacts to look at should they need more clarification later on.

On tap for this week...learning JSPs, Servlets, and Struts. Awesome. I've had so little experience with web applications. I've only created static HTML web pages in the past so this stuff is blowing my mind.

Anway, this is officially my first blog post ever, so marvel at the noobishness while it lasts.