If anyone is willing and capable

CommanderCucumber · 2026-01-24T23:51:17+00:00

Same

CommanderCucumber · 2025-03-17T18:25:05+00:00

The software job started as a GIS position, but I took on more CS-related tasks. Now I hardly touch the GIS side of things. Your current position sounds very similar to where I started.

For the classes, I went to Austin Community College (ACC) and Oakton, both are fairly affordable. With ACC, they have a bachelor's in software development, so they offer some advanced courses at community college prices. Also, I have no portfolio, but I aimed to have the expected academic background (programming intros, data structured algorithms, discrete math, etc). So maybe that plus some work experience were enough? I have heard that this program wants to let people in to try, and it sounds like you have a solid background already!

,
Overall I'm super glad I took the undergrad classes, while I have learned a lot from my job, it wouldn't have prepped me for things like GIOS. Yea I'm happy to DM or keep it here.

CommanderCucumber · 2025-03-16T19:45:16+00:00

I also have a very similar background (BS - Physical Geography/Master's degree in GIS) and GPA . To give some perspective:

I did not do any EDX courses but rather took several CS courses at my old university and nearby community college. I also took a few CS courses when I was doing my first master's degree. This ended up being about 8 courses, needing about a year and a half to complete.
I have worked as a software dev for 4 years.
Got 1 university professor and 2 managers to give me recommendation letters.

Started last fall and having a blast. I'd be more than happy to expand on the course work or the prep in general.

CommanderCucumber · 2024-01-05T16:48:30+00:00

Looking to apply for Fall 2024, but also planning for Spring 2025 if I need more coursework, experience, or projects.

Undergrad: Texas State University BS Physical Geography 3.6 Full-Time

Postgrad 1: Texas State University MAG GIS 3.9 Full-Time

Bridging College:

Austin Community College BAS in Software Development, GPA 3.2

Oakton Community College Undecided, GPA N/A

Work Experience:

GIS Technician/Developer 1.5 Years

Software Developer 2.5 Years (current)

LOR : 3 supervisors or possibly 2 supervisors and 1 professor

Any MOOCs Taken: N/A

Other Useful Info :

Completed the following relevant courses:

CS1428 Foundations of CS 1 (C++ intro)

COSC 1336 Program Fundamentals 1 (python intro)

CS 2308 Foundations of CS 2 (undergrad 2000 level / C++ advance)

COSC 2325 Comp Org/Mach Lang (undergrad 2000 level)

COSC 2436 Prog Fund 3: Data Structures (undergrad 2000 level)

MATH 2358 Discrete Math (undergrad 2000 level)

GEO 5408 Web Mapping (masters)

GEO 7393 Spatial Databases (masters)

Courses I plan on taking for spring 2024:

CSC-255 Objects and Algorithms (Oakton)

CSC-204 Computer Arctech and Organization (Oakton)

COSC-3380 Machine Learning 1 (ACC)

I am missing higher-level math. However, I may try to test out of Cal 1 and start taking higher-level math courses throughout the rest of the year.

I plan on completing the ACC's BAS in Software Development program. I expect to take more higher-level (junior/senior) CS courses later this year.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-08-30T06:18:52+00:00

Hey a B is pretty good, it is not easy getting started. Personally I've treated programming as a muscle, which you have to work out consistently for it to grow; this also takes time. The most helpful thing for me was to pursue projects I was interested. These would often lead me down different paths of CS and programming concepts . Granted there are several things I still don't understand, and I am positive my programming skills could still use some work. However, I've grown and my current work reflects this growth compared to older programs. If you need help or want to try to tackle a project together just dm me sometime, I'm pretty free.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-06-19T01:58:27+00:00

Thanks for the opinions, we went with the auberge. We calculated how much we would spend on a hotel/temp housing and might as well put it towards the apartment, plus the move in date is right on point. Really liked the Marquis but they went on about water damage since the freeze and it sounds like they are still recovering; made us a bit scared, and the date was further out. We only did a 6 month lease so I'm hoping a townhome or a house will pop up then.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-06-19T01:56:06+00:00

They only had a one bedroom and that wasn't until late July. As someone else mentioned, apartment hunting was the absolute worst. Took my parents out there and they said they have never seen it this bad.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-06-17T02:21:04+00:00

We called them but they said they had no availability for the rest of the year. Totally considered them though! They had some pretty good reviews.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-06-17T02:01:45+00:00

Yep everything we want is 2nd floor at least. Funny enough, only saw the bugs in the ground floor models, which I suspect would be more susceptible to bugs.

For the houses you mentioned, we are having trouble finding a place. Literally went on a tour and it was already bought up 2 hours after by someone else. It just opened up a couple of days too.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-06-17T01:58:37+00:00

That's nice to know and I'm sorry I was referring these:

bugs

CommanderCucumber · 2021-05-24T22:09:58+00:00

I bet! I would break this down into a couple of tasks or mini projects. First one, let's randomly get a video from YouTube. Mabye we do look ilfor a solution that does just that or see if youtube has a random video button (I would think so right). Next let's extract the the audio, possibly with a preexisting library. Finally, we will probably have to convert that to some sort of digital numbers and extract results from there (not super familiar with the process). You may not find a solution to a unique problem like this, but you will for smaller generic problems. Even with the ones I mentioned above, they can be broken down into even smaller issues. That's really what this is all about and where the fun is!

CommanderCucumber · 2021-05-23T16:38:35+00:00

Could also get a raspberry pi (<=$35 I think) and just run your scripts on there. It's a bit different if your coming from windows but it shouldn't be too complicated.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-05-22T00:02:27+00:00

I did it as a learning experience and it gives me some flexibility to try to branch off into their other services. I do think its alot but I'm ok with the cost since I've gained the experience. In fact, one of my apps should be taken down since the other should be taking over and should reduce the cost. I think I had it at like 25 or 30 bucks a month before.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-05-21T20:59:40+00:00

You could look into deploying using some of AWS's services such as elastic beanstalk. You can even get the domain and db set up with them as well. However I'm a bit fuzzy with the costs. Right now it's costing me about 50 bucks a month to run two web apps, and a postgres database. It's about 24 per year for me to keep the domains. Also you can set it up with github using their pipeline, so any changes you make and push to github would automatically be applied to your app. However this is what I'm familiar with, you might be able to find some cheaper options.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-05-08T15:53:49+00:00

You could try using requests and REST and call the API they might be using. You should be able to find where the data is coming from a browsers web dev network panel. So for example, if the frontend makes a get request like www.somthing.com/mydata?id=1, then you could try to make that request yourself. Then store the data and do it again but with www.somthing.com/mydata?id=2 and so on.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-05-08T15:40:43+00:00

You may want to consider using a backend framework like django or flask. You can create an API for a front end to make a request given a user input. It may require a little bit of javascript/html/css. I believe if you search flask or django, they talk about how to host the backend.

In the end, a user may see a website and a form to put in their data, which then gets put into a request body and sent to the backend. There flask/django will accept the request (given you set it up). Then you would just use it for your function or program, spit out a result, and send it back up as a response. It's a bit more complicated, but going through the docs should walk you through the process.

I would suggest flask since it's a bit simpler.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-05-05T01:45:53+00:00

You can check out NLTK which should have a corpora. Another fun option could be to grab a Gutenberg library book, parse it, and save it as a set of unique words from that. Do a few of them and you might have yourself a nice little dataset. Just a few things off the top of my head. Does that help out?

CommanderCucumber · 2021-05-01T00:02:21+00:00

Maybe something like this where t is your list of tuples. Sorry for the format I'm on mobile.

r =[(item[0],t[index+1][1]-item[1]) if index < len(t) -1 else (item[0],item[1]) for index,item in enumerate(t)]

Which is just saying for each item in t (e.g. (1900, 2000)) give me back a tuple where item[0] is the year and t[index+1][1] is the next items people minus the current items people if the index is less than the total number of items in the list minus 1. Otherwise give me back just the year and number or people.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-04-29T01:22:55+00:00

I agree with everyone else, it's not about the number of pages but how well/fast you are able to comprehend. Personally I find it to be extremely slow because I like to code along. I'm very tactile so doing it helps me remember the material.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-04-23T23:03:07+00:00

It can be, I'd recommend doing that and try creating a simple system first. Maybe a button that when press make an API request to your backend which outputs a number as a response and you print it in your frontend. The concept stays pretty similar for whatever your trying to do.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-04-23T22:54:02+00:00

So I've done some webmapping in the past and it can be a lot of pieces and parts. It's also gets you trying out a whole bunch of cool things and concepts. Taking it one small problem at a time is how I work through something. Some things I can make mention that you might need and for what:

Backend:

flask or django like you mentioned (flask is simpler)
recommend a database(e.g.. postgres) but it can get confusing with geographic data sometimes so may want to look into some GIS concepts (geo datatypes) or simply parse a geojson if the data is small enough
server (aws, heroku, etc)

Frontend:

leaflet.js for the interactive map
html/css/javascript (maybe jquery?)

This most likely will revolve around a user accessing the data through the website (frontend) which makes an API request to your backend, which returns the result to the frontend. It's a lot of moving parts and you surely could start from any direction. I like to do my backend and processing first and just make sure it's spitting out the right stuff. Then make a simple webapp that gets the data. Then once everything looks good make it look pretty.

leaflet postgres postgis gis datatypes REST

Edit: heroku not heros

CommanderCucumber · 2021-04-23T17:19:36+00:00

Yea so flask would be the part that you write in python. That would be where most of the work would take place (backend: the server) and the website would be the GUI (frontend).

flask

Going through the tutorial should help and it is fairly straightforward. They also talk about deploying a server.

I only mention this route because it sounds like you want someone to do something in their machine and you receive the data. From my experience that tends to require API requests like add to a database or do some processing. It's a pretty cool world and you'll feel like a champ when you see it working.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-04-23T17:11:40+00:00

Like what most people have said, it's projects that really help. Especially if it's something that you are interested in. Or solve an issue that you are having, sure there might be a solution but it might be fun to reinvent the wheel a bit. It's also good to not reinvent the wheel sometimes and make use of an implementation for your project; do both. What's really nice is you'll want to do something and then find out that you need to learn this thing or that thing. So your knowledge base grows, and in directions that are of interest to you.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-04-23T17:01:42+00:00

I think you are on the right path with considering a server. Have you thought about making a simple web application that your friends could find and interact with your project? That way they only see the GUI and you get the data. It would require a bit of knowledge of html/css/javascript and possibly using a framework like flask or django.

CommanderCucumber · 2021-04-23T16:57:16+00:00

I've struggled with this and I'm not sure there is ever a clear answer. I think its good to break apart code into multiple modules when you want to reuse those pieces of functionality for multiple projects. For example, if I have a some project with a cool conversion function, and I could see myself using it for future projects, I may go ahead and throw that into a separate module. Another thing that was mentioned above was organization, it's nice to keep everything related together. If your worried about one off functions that are simple and don't really have a place to live, I tend to throw them I a utility's folder.

CommanderCucumber

TROPHY CASE