The first of this academic year’s distinguished lectures will be given by Professor Joe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang, on Monday 16^th November 2015 at The Byre Theatre. The programme is as follows:

09:15 – 09:30   Introduction By Professor Kevin Hammond

09:30 – 10:45   Lecture 1 [Setting the scene: I’ll talk about the software landscape of the mid 80’s and discuss which problems we were  trying to solve. I’ll talk about the early experiments that led to Erlang.]

10:45 – 11:15   Coffee Break – Refreshments provided

11:15 – 12:30   Lecture 2 [The middle years: I’ll talk about the enhancements we made to Erlang. How we added distribution and the bit syntax and so on. I’ll talk about company politics, building a community and about the obstacles to introducing a new technology.]

12:30 – 14:00   Lunch Break – Free time

14:00 – 15:15   Lecture 3 [WhatsApp and the future: I’ll talk about what happened after Erlang became open source and how this changed everything. I’ll talk about the explosive growth of Erlang which lead to adoption by WhatsApp.

 I’ll also talk about the future. What are the challenges of the Internet of things? How can we make massively distributed systems that run forever?]

15:15 – 15:30   Q & A Session – Open forum

This is the first part of a 4-part workshop. Details are as follows:

Date and time: 24^th Sept 4.30PM – 6.30PM

Venue: Jack Cole 1.33A/B

Workshop Leader: Shyam Reyal (smr20)

Sign up here: http://goo.gl/forms/RfnaQhZSB2 (Only 3 days left)

 Workshop 1A (24^th September) Contents:

• Introduction to the internship recruitment process
• Panel discussion on the most important aspects of securing an internship/job placement
  • Facing the programming interview
  • Enhancing your required skills and CV
• Sharing internship experiences by current/returning Computer Science Honours and PhD students
  • Shyam Reyal, Peter Josling, Robin Nabel (Google)
  • Simone Conte (Adobe)
  • Ilia Shumailov (Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase)
  • Gala Malbasic (Makers Academy)
  • Maria Kustikova (Soliton Systems)
  • Nick Tikhonov (Amazon)
• Informal networking session

Some points of discussion are highlighted below:

• What to expect during the recruitment / selection process
• How to enhance your resume/portfolio to boost your chances of getting an interview
• How to prepare for ‘the programming interview’
• What skills/qualifications should be developed to improve your chances, and how

Future Workshops:

Workshop 1B – 1^st Oct

• Detailed workshop on enhancing your online presence and portfolio, preparing for ‘the programming interview’

Workshop 1C – 19^th Nov

• Interactive session on solving interview style programming problems in a time constrained scenario

Workshop 1D – 26^th Nov

• Practice/mock interview session with feedback for improvement

Our ultimate objective is to see our students secure more, high quality internships/job placements in high-end tech companies and/or start-ups!

This workshop is targeted at honours and masters students. However, keen sub-honours students and PhD students are welcome. We believe it is never too early or too late to start looking for internships and developing your skills. Refreshments will be provided!

 

Contact aef6@st-andrews.ac.uk for more information.

 

The Academic Skills Project – sponsored by the School of Computer Science and CAPOD – will commence in week 2 and run every Thursday evening in JC 1.33a/b, with workshops covering a range of topics from internships to writing technical reports. The workshops will be targeted at undergraduates, but postgraduates are welcome to attend. For details for each workshop, please see posters on the notice boards, and sign-up sheets for each workshop session will be available on notice boards two weeks before the workshop session. For more information, contact aef6@st-andrews.ac.uk.