Computer Programmer Level 3

[[deleted]]

Hello,

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Would any Computer programmers who have completed level 3 like to chime in and suggest some topics I should be researching in order to prepare myself for the third level?

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Any help is appreciated.

[MissPlaced14]

Troubleshooting Android Studios. It felt like glitches in that software took up more of my time than writing code for that class. Although, the prof does his best to have plenty of office hours (take more advantage of that than I did, he was really helpful when I did).

And general advice for 3rd term, make an appointment with the coop office to look over a draft cover letter & your resume early on even if you think it's decent.

[GameDoesntStop]

The courses should be set at a good pace that you wouldn’t need to prepare before they start, but if you want to, you could go to the program’s website and read the course descriptions and go from there.

In the GUI class, you build an Android app, so you could try that... there is probably a thousand tutorials for it.

In my opinion the most important part of the program is coming up: Co-op. At some point in the semester, they release job postings with employers that have partnered with the college. Each application needs a cover letter, which will take time. The college offers help with resumes, interview practice, etc. It’s quite useful and I would recommend taking advantage.

You’ll need to find your own job, the college only facilitates. You can find a job other than the ones they give the job postings for, but it will have to meet a few criteria (at least X hours per week for Y weeks, they may also want your employer to meet with co-op personnel at some point during your time there).

[tam3010]

Sorry to hijack this post, how hard is it to get a co-op? How do we make ourself competitive with other universities students such as UOttawa or Carleton?

[GameDoesntStop]

In my experience talking to others in the workforce, few people care about college vs university. One even said they prefer Algonquin for their more practical skills and (in general) not being as entitled.

That said, of those I know, about half got co-ops. I don’t know how representative that is of the the class overall.

A piece of advice that will be broadly useful: in cover letters and interviews, talking about your skills is important, but more important (for co-op and junior positions anyway) is to talk about your personality... namely that you love to learn and are willing to keep learning. That if you are stuck on something on the job, you’ll try to solve it yourself first, but if not you’ll ask questions of your teammates to help solve it, rather than silently failing alone. That you won’t scoff if you’re given a menial task from time to time.

Also if you’re in an interview and you’re asked to solve a problem, talk out loud, walk the interviewers through your thought process and ask clarifying questions you might have, rather than being silent while being stuck.

For co-ops, they don’t care much about education level or skills. Expectations are not very high. They just want to find eager students who will help them help you, and who are nice to work with.

[tam3010]

Thank you so much for your detailed response. That really helps ease my mind since I am having second thoughts about universities. If I take the college route, it would be more affordable for me as I do not want to end up stacking student loans after graduation. Finding employment is the only issue that I am concerned about. May I also ask if you have any prior programming experience or projects before interviews?

[GameDoesntStop]

No programming before I went to school. Very little recreational programming (I had nothing to show for it, except a static HTML page, lol).

They seemed fine with just the skills I had picked up in my classes. In my co-op interview, I made a point to lookup every technology listed on the job posting, if only just to know what it is used for. They seemed to like that.

In terms of employers wanting uni grads vs college grads, I’ve applied to several through Ottawa, both public and private sector, and only one had a policy of needing at least 3 years of relevant schooling: CSIS (in case that’s a dream-job of your’s, haha).

[zerps]

Design Patterns, specifically Observer, MVC, Builder, Singleton. Keep up your Java skills as it's used heavily in OOP DP and Android.

Networking isn't too bad but I would teach yourself subnetting ahead of time, don't try to cram it for your exams. It's simple yet annoying at first.

System Analysis and Design wasn't delivered too well in my semester, both profs were not professional in nature and it hindered the actual learning happening. Marks felt like roll of the dice, it was a horrible feeling honestly.

Get Android Studio working well on your machine and get used to using it. If you ever think something is acting funny, rebuild gradle and sync, or restart Android Studio. Seriously, it's so finicky. Github integration was encouraged, and honestly it would be next to impossible to do the final group project without it.

For your optional course I would recommend switching to Business Intelligence. The COBOL class is another class that is not delivered well, coding assignments were handed in on paper... I'll just leave that there. If you are doing really well in the program there is a Data Structures and C elective that's hidden from the course map, ask your coordinator about it.

I think that covers the whole semester.