On 03/24/2014 04:14 PM, Kevin Jensen wrote: > I've enjoyed the answers thus far, but I do want to ask a followup > question. I am currently attending University of Phoenix and *have *found > it to be an expensive self education. Would my time and money be better > placed in putting together a portfolio of projects that show what I already > know as well as continue with self teaching? (I live in Price and it would > take a while to get up to UVU or anywhere that has a computer science or > software engineering degree) >
I encourage all of my IT students to either set up a server at home or VPS, purchase a domain and set up email and a website. When I look at resumes I look at the email address, if it's obviously their own domain, bonus points. I encourage my IT students to look around at friends, family members, and hobby groups to find opportunities to set up more websites, if you charge a few bucks per person per month, you can pay for the VPS. Now you have an online portfolio for your IT work, that you can include in a cover letter/resume. When you walk into the interview you will be able to talk about all the ins and out of the software you've configured while maintaining those sites. Now, this being uphpu this question was actually about program especially web programming. Create a website related to an interest of yours(a non offensive one is probably best)ie: create a an ajax driven web app that helps people decide what to have for dinner, use a framework to create a web app that allows people to track and share which video games they own,a custom webapp that tracks your DVDs and who borrowed them, or a database driven grammer website that explains when to use ie(ie the grammar term, not the web browser we all know when to use the web browser ). The programming part can be done on the a fore mentioned server or on a PaaS services like openshift or Google App Engine(both of which are free, for basic usage like this). Also having stuff in Google Play can be useful if you're looking for mobile work. There's a one time fee of not very much(I can't remember I want to say $20), then you can post all the apps you want. I've been programming full time for 8 years now and I still run my VPS for family and personal projects(great place to play around with new tools that my employer doesn't use), but I don't put any of that on my resume anymore(unless there's something specific to the job I'm applying for that I've only done there). Hope that helps, Kyle Waters _______________________________________________ UPHPU mailing list [email protected] http://uphpu.org/mailman/listinfo/uphpu IRC: #uphpu on irc.freenode.net
