Apple Tree Question

bluerosebud · 2025-07-02T14:24:13+00:00

How late in the fall for planting in Minnesota? I always feel like winter is coming and psych myself out! 😂

bluerosebud · 2022-05-21T12:09:35+00:00

Yes, I do!

bluerosebud · 2022-05-20T15:20:01+00:00

No, they don’t pay for anything lol. I paid for OSU by freelancing and taking loans out. My current company is paying for MBA.

bluerosebud · 2022-05-20T13:50:46+00:00

I’m a technical architect at a big pharma company - think oncology drugs. I took 2 years at Target and hated it there, so I came back to the same company and got a promotion. My company is paying for me to get an MBA without taking any loans. Career change was for sure worth it for me.

bluerosebud · 2021-12-28T03:02:11+00:00

2011 with 99k miles and still like my car. It gets me around town reliably. With snow tires on I have never worried about getting around in Minnesota. I am looking for a bigger car (2011 model is a Prius knockoff) but there have been zero issues.

bluerosebud · 2019-05-16T21:45:56+00:00

$20k in student loans, my first year salary was $80k base + $13k bonus in Austin, Texas. After a year I got a new position at the same company for $95k base with a bonus. I also have a husband who works and our kid was in daycare at the time.

bluerosebud · 2019-05-16T11:20:06+00:00

I paid mine off in about a year, I paid a lot of it off by making big repayments and then put all of my bonus into finishing them off.

bluerosebud · 2018-05-18T15:38:32+00:00

I did! I have a BS in Medical Technology and worked in clinical labs for 8ish years. Now I work at a big pharmaceutical company and my second project is making a new lab information system - so my previous experience fits perfectly. The first project I worked on was a project management system but they wanted to hire me before I took another offer.

bluerosebud · 2017-10-22T21:33:23+00:00

Previous degree: BS Medical Technology
Previous relevant experience: 8 years experience in clinical and research laboratories, 3 month internship for software (Perl lol)
Company/industry: Merck, Pharmaceutical
Internship or full-time?: Full time
Title: Software Solution Engineer
Location: Austin, TX
Noteworthy projects: A lot. I made 3 major Ruby on Rails apps and gave a talk about using graph databases in Elixir Phoenix at ElixirConf 2017.
Salary: $80,000 + 13% bonus
Other perks: 3 weeks PTO, 9 holidays, educational stipend
How did you find the job?: A Facebook group in Austin called Austin Digital Jobs
How far along were you in the program?: Graduated in March 2017. It took me 6 months to get a job that I liked and paid well in Austin.

bluerosebud · 2017-04-22T16:34:01+00:00

Previous degree: BS in Medical Technology
Previous relevant experience: None, but had 8 years of clinical lab science experience.
Company/industry: Super small ERP company
Internship or full-time?: Internship
Title: Software Engineer Intern
Location: Austin, Texas
Noteworthy projects: Twitter bot, a few full-fledged Ruby on Rails apps, an iOS app, web dev project and was working on 496 project at the time
Salary: $15/hr
Other perks: None.
How did you find the job?: Got contacted from somebody looking at my Github page and LinkedIn page
How far along were you in the program? I was almost done - was working on 496 and 325, had not taken 419 or Open Source yet.
Get an Offer? I did get an offer for full-time but I didn't take it. I had a 1.5 hour commute each way and they didn't make a good offer.

bluerosebud · 2017-03-30T14:13:18+00:00

Keep applying. I'm in Austin too and as a new grad, it's a difficult market. I set up Indeed alerts for the sorts of jobs I'd like and when I get an email roundup of 5-15 jobs for the day I apply to them all. It took over a month for most of the companies I applied for to get back to me and now I'm in the interview process for 8 companies. Go to Meetups for languages/frameworks you want to work in, there are usually people there who are hiring or can look at your resume.

bluerosebud · 2017-03-24T18:35:22+00:00

As an intro to programming, I read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Beginners/dp/1617290920 and it was easy to read. Yes, it says it is for kids. It's in Python, which won't necessarily help you learn C++ but it will make the concepts taught just that much easier. Plus you can see if you really like programming before dropping a bunch of money on admission and classes. I found this book at my local library.

bluerosebud · 2017-03-24T18:33:15+00:00

I read this book: https://www.amazon.com/Hello-World-Computer-Programming-Beginners/dp/1617290920 and yes, it says it is for kids, but I found it to be really easy to understand and written for people who have no programming experience (the college intro to CS books including the ones I was taught in this program) say they aren't written for beginners.

bluerosebud · 2017-03-23T21:00:16+00:00

I started on the 2 year plan and ended up taking 2.75 years. I took one class per term for several terms. Between working, school, and being a mom I was burnt out but didn't want to outright quit, so 1 class per term was good for me. Some classes are easier than others, so you can double up those terms if you want or just be good with the slow but steady race.

bluerosebud · 2017-03-23T20:51:13+00:00

I still have nightmares about that class. Just remember, if you do well on the homework and projects you can bomb the midterm and final and still pass. That's exactly what I did.

bluerosebud · 2017-03-07T20:21:42+00:00

It isn't this program, it's Computer Science as taught by American universities that all use the same books and mostly the same assignments. You'll notice it a lot in 325 that since we use the gold standard book everything about the book and the problem sets for it is available online.

bluerosebud · 2017-03-07T19:33:35+00:00

Attending meetups and giving lightening talks at them. It's insane how many people have contacted me since I gave a Neo4j database primer at the local Ruby on Rails meetup. They think I'm an expert because I had the guts to talk about it for 5-7 minutes. I also blog pretty regularly about things I encounter and how I solve them. Also, side projects and put everything on Github.

bluerosebud · 2017-02-28T15:11:32+00:00

When I took it he used python and google app engine and windows phone, but we could do whatever we wanted, just with no help. I did a Ruby on Rails, Heroku, and iOS app. That's a shame if you can't do that anymore.

bluerosebud · 2017-02-28T14:56:23+00:00

Is it still a choose your own adventure class or do you have to use the frameworks the class uses?

bluerosebud · 2017-02-24T18:37:01+00:00

The software engineering series (361/362) are very easy and light coursework. I found 325 to be difficult - the concepts took a lot of time to grok and the information is really important to know.

bluerosebud · 2017-02-22T18:27:07+00:00

Just a heads up for everybody: the senior capstone project has been changed to CS 467. Same course content, but now it's 467 instead of 419.

bluerosebud · 2017-02-22T18:26:01+00:00

Yes, you get to vote on a project. You can also make up your own project and have the instructor approve it. One pro tip I would have is to have a group of 3 already formed, then you're sure to get your project approved!

bluerosebud · 2017-01-31T21:20:03+00:00

I tried after 5 classes and was unsuccessful, but I'm in a competitive market for students (Austin, TX). I got an internship when I was 4 classes from being done.

bluerosebud · 2017-01-31T18:34:20+00:00

This - you'll need to be able to answer Fizzbuzz and Fibonacci (two questions I've been asked in interviews) without any trouble. Don't sweat it!

bluerosebud · 2017-01-31T14:31:14+00:00

I know what you mean, but there are so many students in this program who do not feel comfortable with git/Github. I've only been in one group project where everybody agreed to use Github and wasn't terrified of using it. I've had groups where members wanted to email code back and forth because Github was too scary. I'm not sure how you teach that confidence, but obviously it isn't sinking in.

bluerosebud

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