Author: Jeremy Bullis

Over the past several weeks I have had the great pleasure of working with a couple of teammates to work on a project called the Cross-platform personal trainer app. It has been a whirlwind, and have found myself learning new things every week. The largest being mobile development in general, as this is not a framework that I have been exposed to prior to this term. It took a lot of upfront learning to make sure I was being a productive member of the team. Also learning from each of them as we went. Ultimately when we were finally able to see our development on a a screen did it all feel real.

It has taught me to trust in myself and skills that I have built throughout this program. And that given the space and time, learning new languages, development tools, or environments is within my wheel house. Knowing how to read documentation and how how to implement it into my own situation. I have found this to be very rewarding.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths: Teamwork and array of team projects

Weaknesses: Time frame, 10 weeks go quickly especially with other courses and outside commitments

Opportunities: For me personally, I have always found that I am better at debugging and fixing code then writing from a blank slate. Having the ability to possibly take on a non-working project, or improve upon something that already exists could have value.

Threats: None that I really can see, it seems like the course has a good amount of stop gaps to prevent teammates from not contributing.

I am currently working on the cross-platform personal trainer app. And almost all of the technology we are using for it is new to me. We are currently employing react native expo for building a mobile app. Having zero experience with mobile dev I am in a constant state of learning. On top of that, we are using Google’s Firebase (for authentication of users) and Firestore (for user data storage).

Both of which are fantastic and are making things a breeze to work with. But with such a limited knowledge base, I have no idea how I would go about making any of them better. I would need a lot more experience and time to truly make use of their current features.

I am thoroughly enjoying my time with this project. It is bringing back skills I developed in our web development class, and then expanding on them. Looking forward to what the next few weeks has in store!

I feel these are always a little hard to get started…maybe we should start with a little bit of background.

My name is Jeremy Bullis, and I am currently a senior in the post-bacc computer science program here at OSU. After this term I will be 2 classes shy of graduating and am very much looking forward to being done. Although the tech industry is a little sideways right now, my hope is with all the projects and skills this program has provided me, that we won’t struggle too much to land a new job in an exciting new field.

My first bachelor degree came from the University of Oregon and was in applied physics. My emphasis was in astronomy but they didn’t have a major for that. I have always been fascinated with the stars but found that the career field just never panned out. While my passion there still exists, and maybe I find myself back in that line of work one day! But right now I am looking to the future and roles to help get my career back on track for both me and my family.

My wife and I have also recently welcomed a new baby girl into the world so I have been very caught up with what it means to be her dad and trying to find the time to get some sleep. Providing for them is helping to push me across the finish line. Anyway, looking forward to all the teams projects, and everything this class has to offer. Here’s to a great term!