Field trip: Adobe
In Adobe, everyone is needed, even someone that has a masters degree in English. That is one of the good things about Adobe--it gives all kinds of people the possibility to work with them. Their motto is: work hard, play hard. That means that you are very passionate and hard working but after you've worked hard, you can enjoy little activities like ping pong or just going to the small cafeteria. The scheme is partly based on the Google campus, which has the same motto. Our guide also told us that you can make a pretty good living working at Adobe as a programmer.
Nate Zobrist
He told us to be passionate about what we do. You can be a programmer and have a good income but when you don’t have fun and don’t like it, then it will lead to stress and depression. So when he interviews people, he asks them about their hobbies and what they do in their free time, including if you have side projects. Another very big thing he told and showed us is how many coding languages there are. There are too many to learn all of them but when you know some of the basics then it isn’t that difficult to learn others anymore. At the end he also told us that programmers are always requested in our job life so we won’t have to worry about a good income and getting a job easily.
Hector Piña
He said, “Becoming a programmer is becoming a lifetime student," a quote which he heard from his mentor in his 11 week coding camp. He is very passionate in what he is doing and said that there is a "super bowl moment" in every solved problem. Hector is someone that knows how too much programming can make you stressed out. But he decided that he won’t work on weekends and thus takes a lot of vacations. That doesn’t mean that he does no programming during his vacations. He told us that he once was vacuuming when the solution to a problem of his coding came to his mind and he just ran to his laptop and solved it. So he didn’t actually think about the problem but his brain solved it subconsciously. Another thing he mentioned was to use Google as often as we can because we don’t want to bug our teammate when there is a fast solution on Google. Well, in the end he told us to take our time to play, take some time off the screen and do something we enjoy.
In Class
In class we all are very hard workers that want to become better in programming. We often deal with problems we have never seen before, but that doesn’t discourage us. With the magical Google search bar we solve the trickiest problems that exist, because Google is our friend. We also had lunch 4 times, Panda Express twice and Pizza twice. Once we also had a whole table full with food of different kinds that made us work harder. The atmosphere in class is very relaxed and nobody is over-stressed or goes crazy because of a problem.
Mr. Olsen
Mr. Olsen, the previous German and computer programming teacher of Maeser, came in and told us some tips about programming. One of them was to draw out ideas and AFTER that we should start programming our website. Then we should make it as non confusing as possible so that we have a good overview over our own code (sometimes it can get super confusing and that leads to a mistake in the code).
Mr. Ensign
When Mr. Ensign came in, he told and explained to us how to make our website with good design. The main idea is to only use 2-3 colors - ”keep it as simple as possible”. And when you break that rule, do it with a good reason.
Mr. Heaton
Ryan Heaton works at FamilySearch.org and is there to teach computers how to read old/ancient documents. That means he has to teach them how to read all those old fonts and handwriting which aren’t easy to learn. But still, nothing is impossible as long as we reach for our dreams. For real job stability you need to become the best programmer that is wanted by many companies so that if you lose your job, you still would get one within one week. Another very important point in programming is your creativity and the “thinking outside of the box.” An advantage of the digital documents of 100 years ago is that they don’t take in as much space as the normal paper ones. Furthermore there is access from all over the world. There is no limit to what technology can do except our imagination. Another job except programming that is very wanted is Cypersecurity specialists. There are a lot of dangers in the world but the one of the Internet is even bigger and more dangerous.
Dustin Christensen
He works at Western Governors University, which is an online university. He and 12 others built and created the website in over 2 years of hard work. He defined "passion" as the drive to learn more.
Mr. Giles
He told us that there are a lot of different jobs including computers which are well paid and he also told us how he first used a Teletype when he was in 6th grade. He went to the Air Force for 3 years but that didn't stop him from programming. He was always surrounded by technology and he kept on having the passion for computers and technology. 40 years ago they used to use paper to store the code and their data. So within 40 years the technology has changed a lot and improved so much that people in that century coundn't even have imagined.