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Wondering if a Carnegie Mellon degree is right for you? Read about our students' experiences through the MS in Software Engineering, Technical Track program.
MS in Software Engineering, Technical Track Student
Wondering if a Carnegie Mellon degree is right for you? Read about our students' experiences through the MS in Software Engineering, Technical Track program.
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Suma is a full time grad student in the MS Software Engineering, Technical Track program. A Mechanical Engineering undergrad, she loves writing and is passionate about music, shopping and dogs. |
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Minh is a second-year grad student, a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft, a Vietnamese community activist, a cat-lover and passionate fan of film music. |
 | Nick is a Software Engineer at Google and a first-year grad student at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. He loves hiking, gaming, and both really extremely good and extremely bad movies. |
Monday, January 19, 2009
Gathering and Practicum
After a quite relaxing winter break, I'm back in
Silicon Valley and ready for the next semester. But first, I'm at the Gathering. This is an experience that part-time students will encounter twice in the course of their two-year curriculum, after each two semesters. At these weekend events, we gather everyone in the MS Software Engineering program to the
Silicon Valley campus and so we can have real face-to-face time with the classmates and teammates we've been talking with over the phone in the courses thus far.
We have workshops and activities planned that aren’t just academically related, but fun, like an improv show or something similar or a nice dinner in downtown Mountain View. This time, The Gathering included a tai chi seminar – the purpose was to talk about health and wellness. As software engineers, the faculty want to make sure we not only are fed academically, but also help us to take care of the other aspects of our lives.
But after this, I'll be starting on the Practicum course. This is really the capstone course for us, where we apply what we've learned to a real-world project. Personally, I'll be working with Nokia on a context-aware reminder system with three other people. This, I think, is going to be a really challenging test of what we've learned, and I'm looking forward to it. It's going to be wildly different from anything I've done at Carnegie Mellon so far. So it's with a nice mix of apprehension & excitement around the challenge to come that another semester begins.
posted by Nick Lynn @ 3:41 PM
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Fall semester ends as colorful as it should...
Running neck to neck with tight schedules and strict time lines, amidst challenging course work, technical seminars and student workshops; our fall semester finally comes to an end.
Foundations of Software Engineering was a special course designed for specific requirements like team roles and project practices. Apart from trying new technologies, we also learned how to be an effective team player, efficient developer and constructive critic; all that takes to succeed as a team.
Avoiding Software Project Failures and Metrics for Software Engineers were other courses that help us as software engineers to study, understand, devise and propose the solutions to the problems posed in the coursework.
We studied different samples and we invented possible solutions for them. In most cases, the problems were recurring software discrepancies and unavoidable crisis situations in software projects. The solutions we presented aimed to either solve the problem or reduce the accountability to loss if the problem persists. Both of these courses were real examples of the Carnegie Mellon learning-by-doing methodology – as students, we really saw the principle behind all the courses in this discipline here.
My semester was also spent doing much reseach, as a Research Assistant.
For those who are interested in trying their hand in mobile software development, there are a number of opportunities. There are many research projects here for students to choose from ranging from mobile haptics to mobile meeting arrangers. “Smart spaces” is another research area where the faculty are developing intelligent senior monitoring systems.
Lastly, I spent my free time attending a number of workshops and special speaker engagements.
We have some good technical seminars from different people in the industry, workshops on technologies like Ruby on Rails, Rho Mobile for mobile web development (development in Rails). Also non-technical resume writing workshops like effective resume writing and how resumes could be improved to make them reflect your skills and personality.
This is the right place to be, if you are looking out for something challenging and intuitive.
posted by Sumalatha Komarraju @ 11:20 AM
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
What's been happening
It's been a long time since I last wrote anything here, as I've been overwhelmed in all kinds of ways. Luckily, I'm back on top of things, as another half-semester is in the books and a new one is getting underway. What I finished was a course in Avoiding Software Project Failures, which I loved. We had a number of case studies of real world projects that failed miserably, for a wide range of reasons. While many of the problems they encountered were predictable, many other ones were not. Seeing these examples is something that I know will help me avoid such failures in the future.
Now we've moved on to the Metrics for Software Engineers course, which is a change of pace compared to the Failures course. Here, the focus is on figuring out what metrics are useful in making plans and monitoring projects, with the caveat that 80% of metric initiatives applied end in failure in current companies. So it seems like figuring out how to do these metrics initiatives well is up against long odds, but doing it well is a pretty rare feat. I'll get back to work to finish out this semester and enjoy a much-deserved winter break, where I'll enjoy not having work or school to do.
posted by Nick Lynn @ 10:03 AM
Monday, September 22, 2008
Opening the Door to Success
Are you in search of a school which makes learning an experience?
Do you want to advance your career as a software professional??
If so, this is your key to the door….
Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley is a simulated business and engineering world, with programs designed to let you have the experience of operating as if you were in the real world, as a software professional. If you are on this page, then you are already on your way…
The admissions process is simple enough to gauge your standards and tough enough to gauge your skills. You can think of it as one memory you will never forget, if you are through!! Believe me it’s an experience to have an interview for an admission…
Orientation here at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley is a process that helps you know the place, people and school better. It’s when you actually learn, how you learn and what you learn in the program.
I would like to narrate one such experience of mine in orientation…On the third day of orientation, all the new part-time and full-time students met together and participated in what is called a Lego game with 3-4 people on a team. We were asked to construct a Castle using Lego blocks. In the first round we were instructed to follow the steps prescribed and in the second round planning was left to the team. We were given time to plan and organize. At the end of two stages we were asked to reflect on our progress and team work. This gave everyone an insight into the program’s methodology of “learning by practicing”. That’s what every student is made to do here, “learn by doing”.
This program is designed and structured for students to have a first-hand experience in a virtual software environment where you learn to manage risk, avoid failures and plan for your projects that you develop. It will help you teach yourself, what it takes to be a software professional.
Real meetings, project planning and team work, everything is here for you. They mentor and empower your potential to perform better. So, if you would like to advance your career as a successful software person then Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley is the place for YOU!!
You may be wondering, if there is anything else apart from this in the school? Oh yes, it would be of interest to know that we have a robotics club , IEEE meetings ,Technical Talks (called Scotland Yard) and exciting research projects. You can visit the Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley site for more information on this.
Its just fun being here!!!
posted by Sumalatha Komarraju @ 10:17 AM
All Good Things Must Come To an End
Last month, my team wrapped up our eBay/PayPal practicum and delivered a very cool product to the client on time. We even got to do a presentation at the eBay/PayPal conference center there to demo our work to other employees, and what makes me really proud is that our work will live on as an open-source project. There’s also a strong likelihood that we’ll be invited to speak at the next PayPal Developer’s Conference when they will be presenting our work to the developer community. Cool, eh?
The end of the practicum last month also marked the end of my two-year journey through Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. So on August 9th, 2008, some 45 graduates walked to the pomp and circumstances on the NASA campus at Moffett Field to receive our Master’s diplomas. For me, it was my Master’s Degree in Software Engineering.
At our graduation ceremony, our Class of 2008 also presented our class gift to the Carnegie Mellon family: our own CMU Silicon Valley Fence. Now, for those who don’t know, there exists a long tradition of repainting a certain fence that exists at the main campus at Carnegie Mellon University. Student organizations would paint the fence to their desire to advertise student events or send messages to the campus community. Well, in the last weeks of final semester, the west coast graduates collected money and build our own small fence here on the Silicon Valley campus. This class gift was completely student-run: we came up with the idea, collected the money, and while we had a contractor built it, a bunch of us came out on a Sunday to paint it with Silicon Valley themes. At the end, we dedicated the fence to the late Randy Pausch. We’ve even posted pictures and a small
video , and this has also been covered by the
campus press.
Now all good things must come to end. During our graduation ceremony, we said goodbyes to each other, and I hope that many of these friendships that we have built will last for long time. I am a bit sad already to think about the fact that I won’t be seeing many of these people again, so I sure hope that people will still come out to our regular Class of 2008 social gatherings.
Looking back, I can’t believe how fast these two years have gone by. It really seemed like yesterday when we just started this program. It was lot of hard work, and maybe that’s why time really flew. Was it worth? Absolutely. I’ve learned a great deal about software engineering, a month after graduation I was promoted to Senior Software Design Engineer at work, and I am already hearing rumors about classmates forming their own new companies. Shhh… it’s a secret.
This is it. My last blog entry, but certainly not my last affiliation with Carnegie
Mellon Silicon Valley. Hope you enjoyed the read, and if you have any questions, feel free to email me at nguyentriminh@yahoo.com. Good night, and good luck!
posted by Minh Nguyen @ 10:01 AM
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley
This is Silicon Valley. It’s the heart of the software industry, the epitome of American entrepreneurship, the ultimate place to be a Software Engineer. As you drive along highway 101 from San Francisco down to San Jose, you inevitably drive by companies such as Salesforce, Oracle, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Yahoo, Sun, Intel, eBay, Network Associates just to name a few. When you get off 101 in the South Bay, don’t be surprised if you find yourself driving by the headquarters of tech companies such as Adobe, HP, AMD, Google, Facebook and the like.
Right at the center of it all, sandwiched between Google, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin and NASA is Carnegie Mellon West, or shall I better say Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley? We've been told that the school is preparing to be renamed to Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley, to better reflect the grand opportunities that arise from being situated right at the pulse of Silicon Valley.
And, boy, what a difference it makes to be here in the valley. The good is that you build networks and connections like crazy. For lunch, I sometimes leave the Microsoft campus and hop over to Google or Apple to have lunch there with classmates or former co-workers. The “Lunch 2.0” group is organizing get-to-know-the-company lunch events, where I find myself eating and mingling with employees over at LinkedIn, Meebo and the like. You are being constantly approached (sometimes very aggressively) by recruiters trying to persuade you to leave one high-paying job for another high-paying job. Last time, I was having dinner by myself at this shady Vietnamese Pho restaurant, and was doing my assigned reading in the Ruby on Rails book, only to be approached by the CEO of this RoR shop and been given a business card in case I am interested in doing RoR professionally. There are technology events, conferences, workshops and user group meetings sprinkled throughout the valley—CMU West even hosts many.
As I am doing my practicum with PayPal, our team is working diligently on a very cool ASP.NET/Silverlight-based website that uses PayPal’s service-oriented architecture and last week, our Carnegie Mellon team had lunch on the beautiful eBay/PayPal campus and presented the state of our product to one of the directors and his team there. After the practicum, they gave us a grand tour of the facilities and even joked that we might as well just pick up the job application too.
Silicon Valley is just a vibrant area, full of ideas and innovation and Carnegie Mellon knows how to foster it. Besides the popular innovation and entrepreneurship classes taught by startup veterans, we also have an “entrepreneur-in-residence” at CMU West. He’s a venture capitalist who can give guidance on starting your own company, and heck, he might be interested in investing in it. The valley is just full of people with ideas—it seems like everyone from your co-worker to the janitor has an opinion and idea of the next disruptive technology, and are probably already putting a business plan together.
Now, the flipside of being in the heart and center of Silicon Valley, is that you can’t escape it. In an area, where the ratio of men to women is skewed enough for San Jose to be nicknamed “Man Jose”, it’s really disappointing to go to a social event only to be surrounded by nerdy engineers who just haven’t learned the etiquette of not talking about work outside of work. Most annoyingly are those that practice geek speak in the movie theater/Starbucks line in an intentional loud voice. Have they never learned that the first rule about computer club, is to not talk about computer club? I myself always resist the urge of asking someone I first meet where they work or what they do, because I know that like Pringles, once they pop, they’ll never stop.
Yet, overall, Silicon Valley is definitely a quite interesting place for software engineers. It’s a place where not only can you see history being made by the minute, but also where you have every opportunity to be part of making history.
posted by Minh Nguyen @ 10:47 AM
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Architecture Midpoint:
So I’m just about halfway through the summer course in the MS Software Engineering program – Architecture.
So far, it has been a very interesting course. In the first half, we’ve had basically 5 weeks of continuous research and reporting on various architectural styles.
For example, my team and I researched pipes-and-filters, service-oriented, and event-based styles.
Following this, we conducted a 2 week analysis of competing architecture options to build the best system software within a sea buoy (yes, literally, how would you architect a system to put on buoys floating in the sea?).
Needless to say, this is been a lot of work, and has felt a bit overwhelming with the amount of information we’ve had to cover. Looking back, though, I can't really see a different method of quickly exposing people to a wide range of architecture options in a short time. This was probably the best way to give us a survey of various architectural styles. Additionally, as you learn more about any particular architecture, you definitely start to see what pieces of the architectures are fundamental to each one's success or failure.
Overall, this past “mini-semester” has been pretty different than the others, in that there’s been more research-based. I'm pretty excited, though, about the next mini-semester, when we will apply what we learned here towards our "Movie Recommender" product. This is a web-based application that recommends movies a lot like Netflix does. We will be figuring out the architecture for that project with a lot less constraints than we had when describing the architectures in the first half-semester. I think this will end up being pretty cool.
posted by Nick Lynn @ 3:04 PM
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