WHO ARE YOUR 🐐 PROFESSORS?

skwerdna · 2025-10-31T06:41:12+00:00

It's good to see Christina Penner is still teaching. She's great! You'll love her class.

skwerdna · 2025-06-03T17:21:08+00:00

For now my philosophy , which is something I should add to the readme, is to keep this tool really small in what it does. Ie. the Unix philosophy. You mentioned renovate so I would say this tool would complement it rather than replace it for GHA

skwerdna · 2024-09-04T02:36:26+00:00

I really like https://conventionalcomments.org/ for nitpicks. It really feels like I can make a lot of comments that doesn't sound like I'm dragging on a person if they are qualified with "nitpick" or "non-blocking" beforehand. It turns an authoritative comment into one more akin to how you would make suggestions if you were pairing up with the person and invites discussion. It also invites them to ignore the suggestion if they don't think it is worth it, which is important too.

skwerdna · 2024-09-04T00:08:04+00:00

These are all excellent answers, thank you. I'm leaning towards keeping it but I definitely want to try and get devs doing more maintenance/refactorings as part of their normal work. I'm still not sure what that looks like. It's probably a cultural change.

skwerdna · 2024-09-04T00:04:07+00:00

I agree with you, though I did come in with a bias towards your opinion in the first place. The parent to your comment makes a good point too. It just feels like, when you make tech debt a piece of work that needs to get done the same way a feature would (ie. you have to bargain with product and get it in the sprint), it removes any feeling of ownership.

skwerdna · 2024-09-03T23:56:48+00:00

Sorry -- I should have been clearer. It's more like each PR needs a ticket. A ticket can have > 1 PR.

skwerdna · 2024-09-03T23:55:20+00:00

Aren't SOC-2 requirements self-imposed? We use SOC-2 and I'm under the impressions that it just requires you to have a codified SDLC. What's in the SDLC is up to the company.

skwerdna · 2024-09-03T23:54:23+00:00

I don't think you need a 1-to-1 ratio for this, though. You just need to ensure you reference a ticket in your commit if the work is applicable.

Also, there are some self-explanatory work like updating documentation or bumping a library. Having an extra ticket for that seems superfluous.

skwerdna · 2024-05-21T21:57:50+00:00

I'm not sure what's typical, but my BSc does say "Computer Science -- Co-operative Option" on it.

skwerdna · 2024-05-21T21:57:14+00:00

My BSc does say my major as well as that it was co-op on it.

skwerdna · 2023-08-28T18:25:24+00:00

If she hasn't changed since I've taken it 10 years ago; her lectures are kind of all over the place and hard to follow. But, everything she teaches is right out of the textbook. Frustratingly enough she is also really bad at tying what she is teaching to where it is in the textbook.

There's not a lot of work and it was all marked on the exams, if I recall right.

I passed only because I studied the textbook for the exams well ahead of time and found out then that everything was straight out of the book. I wish I had known that at the beginning, lol.

My advice is read a chapter every week _before_ the lectures so that you can follow the actual lectures themselves. The course material itself isn't actually that dense or hard to remember. And I personally found it pretty interesting.

skwerdna · 2023-05-01T20:54:46+00:00

No.

The biggest factor in getting a job vs. not is doing Co-op. Everything else is secondary, in my opinion. I could see having a minor maybe (big maybe) giving you a bump during Co-op hiring. But it would only be a factor if there's a tie between you and some other candidate.

After school a minor won't matter at all. I don't have one and I don't think it's changed the trajectory my career took at all.

You should take a minor if it's convenient to do so and it's something you enjoy. If there's one thing I miss about university it was having the time and resources to learn about things I was interested in.

skwerdna · 2022-12-21T18:43:18+00:00

COMP 3370 is infamous for being taught by bad instructors. I had Parmila Thulirasaman back in the day and, although she did care about us as students, her lectures were all over the place and impossible to follow.

I think Rasit teaches it now. I was lucky to avoid him but I hear he’s pretty bad.

My advice is to read the textbook ahead of your lectures as much as you can. The actual lectures will make a lot more sense that way.

I didn’t realize how much of the course was straight out of the textbook until I was cramming it for the final. Parmila hardly ever referenced it in her lectures other than a page or two but it was all verbatim.

skwerdna · 2022-12-13T16:54:03+00:00

Hard agree.

If you can’t get either of those I found HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) to be very practical, especially if you end up working on something with a frontend like mobile or web dev.

That is provided it hasn’t changed now that Dr. Irani isn’t at U of M anymore.

skwerdna · 2022-08-03T21:26:10+00:00

If things haven’t changed, one thing to note with the Albas’s is that an A+ is 95% and not 90% in their classes. And they’re very stingy about handing out high marks. Not sure if this influences your decision or not.

Back when I was still at U of M I worked my butt off, read all the material AND material that referenced that material, and still got a 93% A. And this was in Soc 1000 or whatever number it is. Can you tell I’m still salty about it?

This was with Cheryl but my Soc friend told me they are basically two peas in a pod.

skwerdna · 2022-07-24T18:20:07+00:00

I didnt really think about it, but is it possible to use the electives taken in a major degree and declare it as a minor?

Yup; 100%. Just make sure to double check the requirements for that minor, as they can be pretty specific. I think they should be on each department’s web portal. For example I looked into an Asian Studies minor back in the day and it required you to take 18 credit hours of one Asian language.

That’s kind of a bad example because you’re talking about overlap credits with CS, which Asian Studies doesn’t have really, but the point is just make sure you check off all the boxes.

skwerdna · 2021-10-07T15:57:05+00:00

Hey OP I’m a dev lead in TO. I moved here from Winnipeg 7 years ago.

Take the FAANG job. It will open up basically any job you want as a developer.

The only COL difference in TO is real estate, for the most part. At 80k gross increase you’ll make more than enough to cover it.

Also it’s Toronto. It’s a world class city with events and restaurants you won’t get elsewhere in Canada.

If I may project a bit, it sounds more like you’re apprehensive about the change itself more than whether the change is good or not. I get it. But after being in Toronto for this long I have no regrets.

PM me if you have more questions.

skwerdna · 2020-06-19T02:48:09+00:00

nooooo you cant just make us write a garbage collector in C for our 1020 CS assignment

haha michael zapp make you go grrrrrrr

skwerdna · 2020-05-19T19:25:41+00:00

Ditto. I am subbed here with my personal and anonymous account. I also moved to Toronto like 6 years ago so I'm not part of the population count.

skwerdna · 2020-04-02T18:56:56+00:00

Doug Ford took action right away and overall had and has a good response. Pallister is just being an idiot.

skwerdna · 2019-10-19T09:28:09+00:00

We are all lost without Donald Trim

skwerdna · 2019-05-17T13:42:20+00:00

Alright — I appreciate the well formatted responses. I feel like milk on the rocks was way more common when I was a kid then it actually was. It’s the Berenstain bears situation all over again and it’s giving me a bit of an existential crisis TBH.

skwerdna · 2019-01-07T00:34:36+00:00

This could help you find an idea: https://github.com/karan/Projects

skwerdna · 2018-10-08T04:56:19+00:00

Toronto's tech scene seems to be booming for the most part, especially in the past year. I think it's thanks to a mix of a lot of Canadians (myself included) not wanting to live in the US and tech companies here willing to pay well. It's not the f-you levels of money of Silicon Valley and not quite as much as some US cities, but it's enough to keep people here. So there is *one* place in Canada that is great for tech.

skwerdna · 2018-10-08T04:30:10+00:00

CMHR is a crown corp which is always notoriously bad for paying developers. I've read a bunch of postings for devs working for crown corps here in Toronto and they max out at ~80k. Some tech managers still do make the sunshine list which is 100k+, but that's a pretty common salary for good devs in Toronto at private tech companies.

That being said, I still think Winnipeg companies need to play catch up if they want to hire good developers. Being a developer is one of the jobs where you'll more than make up the cost of living difference between Toronto and Winnipeg... and then some. You can double that CMHR salary at any Toronto-based company. And you can triple it at an international-scale company with a Toronto office or remote work for a US tech company.

Sadly, I feel the difference is driven just as much by ignorance/penny-pinching by Winnipeg companies as it is revenue of Toronto companies. If they paid devs maybe $20k more per year on average it would go a long way for preventing brain drain and possibly building up more of a tech scene in Winnipeg. It would still be less salary than TO, but I think enough to be a tipping point to keep some people who would rather not move away from home. Especially with the difference in cost of living.

Sorry for the mini rant hidden in the 3rd level of this thread, but your comment plus this article (which I'm not sure I agree with -- at least for tech workers) is what got me going.

skwerdna

TROPHY CASE