About Me
Let me introduce myself
Profile
Hi, my name is Jeremy Fail.
I'm a Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) graduate, and Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) at Swipeclock. I also develop web and desktop software on the side.
I enjoy hanging out with friends, going camping with my family, writing programs, working on my websites, playing video games, and playing the piano and organ.
Story
I recently graduated with my Associate's of Science degree in Computer Science at Salt Lake Community College.
During my time at SLCC, I found a passion in programming. Most of the time I program in Java, which is my favorite programming language. However for web projects I focus on PHP and JavaScript, though I have also worked in ASP.NET.
During the day I'm working at Swipeclock where I am a Software Development Engineer in Test. I help write automation tests for our QA team to use to validate, smoke test, and regression test our products. I have a history in the HR Industry, so my HR experience coupled with my schooling and personal programming projects helps me be efficient in my current job working at an HR Software Development company.
I have been playing the piano since I was 6 and the organ since I was 13. I love to play in my free time! On the piano, I am currently working on learning Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, more commonly known as the Moonlight Sonata.
CSIS 2440 Reflection
My time in Jeff Stone's Class
I have really enjoyed my time in CSIS 2440 with Jeff Stone! I had taken CSIS 1430 from him in the summer of 2017, and thoroughly enjoyed his teaching style. This was actually my fifth class with him (believe it or not), and if he teaches anymore classes that are on my degree-path, I will definitely take them from him! I was actually not originally planning on taking more web development classes, however when I saw that Jeff was teaching CSIS 2440 this semester, I was super excited and decided to take it as he was teaching it. Then after speaking with an academic advisor, I'm glad I did, as it turns out the Bachelor's degree actually requires this class, so I'm glad I took it now rather than later!
When I started learning web development in 2017, I didn't know much when it came to programming. However, since then, I have taken CSIS 1340, 1400, 1410, and 2410, so my experience has grown and I have a deeper understanding for programming in general. This semester as we learned PHP, I was able to use concepts that I had previously learned in Java, C#, and even JavaScript, and apply them to my PHP programming. Once you know one language, I've found that it's quite a bit easier to learn a new one. Most of the general concepts are still there, it's just syntax and code structure that changes from language to language. I'm sure there are languages out there that take more getting used to, but I've found that in general, you can usually pick up these differences pretty quickly.
This semester it was fun to learn how to connect to a database. Having previously taken CSIS 1550, I had some experience with MySQL. However I hadn't actually used it practically (i.e. in a real-world application) yet. Being able to use that knowledge and apply it to something I can use in the real world was incredibly useful, and also kind of fun. I will admit that it was challenging as well, as we all had to do some messing around to get it to work properly. I kept running into errors and problems with some of the functions not doing what I wanted them to! Ultimately though, I was able to get them working and I think my projects turned out nicely.
I was also able to use a couple new CSS Frameworks this semester that I had not used previously (namely Bootstrap and Materialize). They were not taught in the class, but I chose them for a couple reasons. Firstly, Bootstrap is very popular, and secondly, I have recently become interested in Google's Material Design language and thought the Materialize framework would make it easier to make a Material design website (which I was correct about). I enjoyed taking that extra step to learn the basics of these CSS Frameworks, and I hope to use them in the future as well, as I think they will be extremely useful.
Overall, I hope I can use the new things I have learned in the future. In fact, I know I will be able to, as I plan to use PHP on some of my other websites that I develop. I plan to also learn ASP and JSP at some point, which are both back-end server-side languages (Microsoft and Oracle's respectively), and I hope my knowledge of PHP will help me learn them.
