Opening the Next Chapter

Time flies. Three years have passed since I began studying at the IT-university. Three pretty amazing years I might add! Having been interviewed twice about why I started at the Software Engineering and Management programme I’m still not sure I know or remember the answer. However, in retrospect I don’t really care either as it has been a perfect match and I’ve enjoyed (almost) every moment of it. And since this is my last blog post on this blog, allow me to explain why.

• Problem Based Learning (PBL) – Without a doubt the projects that we’ve carried out at the SEM programme has been the most rewarding, as well as the most demanding. Getting a group with members of extremely broad backgrounds to collaborate and produce quality results is as fun as it is challenging.
  

  Some dude (aka Jonte) enjoying the cleaning after a Christmas party

• Work space – I wrote about it last year and I got some harsh critique on the post in the lines of “How much did the ITU pay you to write that?” but I stand for every word I wrote. Having open areas, and areas in general, which students can go to everyday and basically use as an office has allowed, at least me, to pick up on questions, material and facts that I’m sure would have missed if I stayed at home.
• Flexibility – almost every course have allowed the students to, to some extent, choose their topic of specialisation themselves. Not only is it motivating, but it also allows me to early on discover which areas I’d like to follow up and perhaps specialise in.
• Diversity – roughly 60% of our class were foreigners. This provides a tremendous cultural experience. Enough said.
• Teachers – (and for my classmates reading, yes, I know it’s controversial) Actually we happen to have had the luxury of having Gothenburg University’s best teacher, Carl Magnus Olsson, as he was this spring awarded with the university’s finest pedagogical prize. However, without giving any names, we’ve also been unlucky to have some pretty crappy pedagogues and thereby also had the opportunity to practice our course evaluation skills.

Overall though, my ITU experience will be remembered for the amazing moments: hacking late nights with crazy and fun friends still somehow managing to deliver on-time, Emil Janitzek and my thesis writing, the crappy free coffee, the countless number of pranks a common result of either too much free coffee or too much intensive programming.

There’s tonnes more to say but it is time to move on. Many of my classmates are already busy earning money at various companies around Gothenburg, some are about to start any time, some are continuing to study. Myself, I’m continuing with an Erasmus Mundus Master’s degree in Distributed Computing starting as an exchange student in Portugal this autumn.

Two final remarks: One, if you have any questions feel free to contact me (marcus at quandoo dot se). Two, if you’re interested in blogging here contact me too and I’ll forward your request.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

What does the future look like? An IT-student perspective.

There's definitely light ahead - by JPhilipson @ Flickr

This question can be answered with a single word, bright. Allow me to motivate.

On GUL, our the student portal, there are currently around 30 positions available within our field of study. Positions are ranging from software tester at H&M to database developer at Regionarkivet in Västra Götaland to e-commerce developer at Fiwe. Admittedly, 30 places aren’t that much compared to the number of students graduating in a couple of months. So what’s more? And how can we as students make ourselves more attractive? There are, in my view, a number of ways that we can start doing already in the first year of our studies.

Attend guest lectures
The IT-university regularly arranges guest lectures, both open to public, and specific to the educational programmes. Be present and ask questions at the Q&A. Perhaps the presentation wasn’t what you expected, then one way can be, in a gentleman way of course, to suggest improvements to the presentation. Magnus Härlin, a software developer at Iptor, recently spoke as part of a test course, here’s his response to one of my tweets:

Höll en presentation om Design for testability på #ituniv. Lägger till test som dokumentation i ppt:n om efter @mljungblad tweet

Roughly translates to: “Held a presentation about design for testability at #ituniv. Adding test as documentation in the ppt after @mljungblad’s tweet “

Visit developer conferences
Last summer Magnus, a classmate of mine, and I visited the Erlang Factory in London. But attending conferences are often ridiculously expensive you say. That’s true. Often they are. We e-mailed the organisers and explained to them that we’re students and cannot afford an expensive conference but are eager to meet industry and other Erlang hackers. In return for free entrance we helped out filming the various talks. That way we were able to both meet industry, mingle with amazing hackers and create new valuable contacts.

This week #scandevconf is running in Göteborg. Unfortunately I won’t be going, it would have been cool to meet up with Chris Hedgate though, a former very inspiring guest lecturer on software processes and agile development.

Discover companies at fairs
Honestly, I’m not a big fan of fairs. The conversations are seldom genuine. Maybe I’m doing it the wrong way, but forcing my CV onto someone doesn’t seem like the way to go about things. However, fairs are perfect for finding out what companies are out there. When I first began studying I only knew a handful of places where I could imagine myself working. Of those, Google, Opera, and Facebook were a few. Today, I don’t particularly look to those places because I’ve found so many many more interesting places with unique touches. And many of these I’ve first discovered at various fairs.

The companies are there because they want to talk to you. Take the chance and ask them. One question I particularly like is:

“What is the most boring task you do at your job?”

If they don’t answer honestly, or he/she is not a developer, I walk away. Sad, but true.

By the way, don’t miss Gösta this Wednesday (17 March) at Lindholmen campus!

In summary
In the end it all boils down to one thing: being active. Both in your studies, but also in the extra curricular activities. You never know when there’s a helpful contact around the corner or project to contribute to. You will rarely get anything for free. It’s about conversation, giving and taking. Don’t count success in the number of job offers you get, but rather in number of conversations you have.

Do you have more ideas on how to strengthen yourself? Please comment! Sharing is, after all, caring.

The future is already here

For centuries we’ve been yearning, wishing, hoping and shed tears of blood for this time to come. And for centuries we never thought it’d be more than just a fantasy. But someone heard our prayers, someone let us know we’re being loved! I can not express the joy that’s hurling inside me whenever i think about it, I feel like I’m going to explode if nothing else and I believe my fellow students, friends and geeks also will. At times like this I do feel like I am living in a dream or in a movie, as if I’ve warped into the future. This generation might live long enough to see the future come and see many parts of the so epic science-fiction movies to come true.

The item I am being so excited about is of course none the less than Epoc controller. It is certainly the next generation controller and despite it having flaws, the technology has really come a long way. Now, if only I can get one of those… The launch date will be in the end of December in the United States and it will cost $299. There’s also, sadly enough, limited examples and can only be bought in United States. So unfortunately we up here in the north will have to wait a bit longer for it. For how long I can not tell but I won’t be surprised if it’ll take at least a year. When it comes to game there’s only one game that you’re able to play with this headgear, but let us just  wait and hope that the evolution of this thing is going to be fast and awesome!

Watch here and yearn…

The destination of our digital culture

Two identical souls walking the face of the earth, coexisting in the same dominion of chaos. What will happen if they shake hands?

-The fourth dimension will collapse upon itself. You stupid bitch!

The apocalyptic movie Southland Tales gives a picture of how the destination of our current digital culture will look like. It is a world with highly complex technology and incredible possibilities. Clone machines and alternative energy sources are a fact, but unfortunately also economical crisis and extreme surveillance. There are soldiers on rooftops everywhere, with loaded machine guns and laptops connected to a watchtower. Up in the watchtower sits an evil woman with red lipstick, spinning her chair watching all the screens around her as she is stressfully chewing gum. This is not particularly popular amongst the rebellious neo-Marxists. Moreover, a porn star, named Krysta Now, is trying to (sort of) save the world with her new reality show. Because on top of all this: it is the world war three.

WW3…

…and a million other details.

(But I won’t spoil the whole movie for you guys, because I really recommend you watching it. Not just because Justin Timberlake is in a starring role.)

When having seen this extraordinary dystopia, I wonder:

• Is future technology threatening our existence?

An apple a day keeps the doctor away! iPod 4 Life

The iconic mp3-players are everywhere. All the time. Apple has conquered the world with their stylish, yet functional design. The marketing is beyond enormous; Apple is part of our daily life, and we all stroll around with the characteristic white headphones in our ears. Whatever your favourite genre might be, we all agree that music is vital. Most people can’t live without it. So, investing in an iPod seems like a great idea for collecting all your music in one place. No wonder iPods are popular!

Every new generation of iPods becomes better, thinner, more chic with fancier colours and new effects. On top of that, the amount of music that goes into one player increases incredibly fast.

Why is the development like this? Well simply because there is a demand for it.

And what about the demand?

I believe the key to Apple’s success with their iPods is the simple fact that people download music illegally. How could we afford filling up our iPods otherwise?

Let me explain this in a simple if-statement:

if  (downloading  >  buying){
ipod = success;
}

In the near future there will definitely be a catch-22 for the music industry and the ones holding onto the old copyright laws.

Who do you think will win the battle?

Music is the new silence

Buttersonic with Sub6 is a current favourite. Great psytrance for real concentration.

Some say that studying in silence is the only way to really keep you concentrated. They always claim: “It is scientifically proven!” You can neither question or doubt it. Nor could I. After years of (apparently) bad study habits, I had to make a change. I had to stop listening to music.

I tried hard for a long time to resist my iPod every time I opened up my books. It wasn’t easy at first, but little by little I got accustomed to work in silence. But I realized that silence is uncommon; there are noises everywhere. Buzzing fans, ticking clocks, my own breathing… It got even harder to concentrate than it was before. And the worst thing of all: studying became boring.

But then I heard of this woman who studied to become a physician. Future doctors have a lot to read! This lady had in fact seventeen books to memorize for an upcoming exam. The interesting thing about her is that she always listened to music. She says that music together with reading make the whole brain work instead of just one hemisphere. Music in that sense increases your capability of remembering what you read.

*wonder where I put my iPod*

Day 1: Keynotes at Erlang Factory

Hans Svensson at Erlang Factory

First day at Erlang Factory with two interesting keynotes, two talks and a lunch has already passed. Time flies! Here’s a recap of the two keynotes.

Keynote 1: Joe Armstrong

Instead of talking about the greatness of Erlang, Joe gave an enlightening and engaging talk about what is wrong in Erlang. As Joe is one of the creators behind the language, it was obvious that he has thought quite a lot about this, and has a lot of ideas. To quote @jonromero “Insanity leads to innovation” – I can only agree! Erlang has an interesting journey ahead and with the attraction it is getting, who knows where it will end? Not Joe at least.

Keynote 2: Bjarne Däcker

In contrast to Joe’s talk, Bjarne (if I understand correctly was Joe’s boss at Ericsson) talked about the history leading up to and around the Erlang development. The CSLab at Ericsson had the task to research software technologies that could enhance the telecom products that the company was developing. Thus, it seems to me that the team were doing a lot of fun research “playing with cool technologies” to see how it could be applied in reality. In the end, as you might know, the ended up designing their own language. Bjarne talked a lot about the sources of inspiration for Erlang, such as Ada, Lisp, Chilli, Prolog, C-wire and some other obscure names I have never heard of before. The mix is what constitutes the Erlang! Easy huh?

More to come later!