‫إﻟﻰ طﻼﺑﻨﺎ ﻓﻰ‬

‫ﺣﺎﺳﺒﺎت وﻣﻌﻠﻮﻣﺎت‬

‫ﺳﻨﺔ ﺛﺎﻟﺜﺔ و راﺑﻌﺔ‬

Mostafa Saad Ibrahim

Teaching Assistant @ Faculty of Computers & Information - CU
PhD Student @ Simon Fraser University
Goals for the 2nd year vacation

◼ We talked about that in 1st/2nd year video

◼ Programming Skills, OOP, Problem Solving, Projects
◼ Your next critical question:

Which department?
When to think about departments?

◼ Think in the 2nd (or 3rd in some faculities) year vacation

◼ Don’t earlier
◼ Opinion: When you think or raise questions about
something that you know nothing about
◼ = silly/weird questions
◼ First 2 years gives you good base for the departments
◼ E.g. Signals is IT related
◼ E.g. Simulation/Modeling is DS related
◼ E.g. Database is CS/IS related

◼ Private departments
◼ From first term your select your department
Department misleading info

◼ There are many people talk about departments

◼ And most of them will have mistakes
◼ The best one to tell you about a department?
◼ TAs and Drs from that department / top students
◼ Ask them about market opportunities and salaries
◼ Ask more than a person
◼ Check some of the department courses
◼ I know CS, but I don’t know others
◼ So when I refer to other deps, I might do mistakes!
◼ I was CS Major - IS Minor
Departments boundaries

◼ Each university has some departments

◼ Some are common
◼ Same department?
◼ Even same department may vary in its courses/careers
from university to another
◼ Also, things may vary abroad
◼ So be careful from the department perspectives beyond the
university
Careers and Courses
Faculty Courses
Critical Course
C1

C2
Good to know
C3

C4
C5

C6

C7

C8

External
Courses

Img Src Src

 Departments and Careers

Software Industry
Software Engineer (CS/IT)
Frontend, Backend, Full-stack, ML, Embedded
Quality Engineer (IS)
Support Engineer (CS/IT)
Security Engineer (IT/CS)
Research (Msc/PhD)
Network Engineer (IT)
Network Administrator (IT)
R&D
Systems Analyst (IS)
Business Analyst (IS)
Business intelligence analyst (IS)
…..
Departments and Careers

◼ Does it affects you? YES

◼ You will keep studying its courses, be wise and study in
the potential future direction
◼ Can I work in jobs of other departments? YES
◼ Boundaries are not that tight, you can switch careers
◼ How to select?
◼ Based on your: desires, passions, skills & opportunities
Departments and Coding

◼ CS/IT are heavy in coding

◼ Then DS department
◼ Then IS department
◼ Still hate coding? that might be your choice
CS Department

◼ Subjects
◼ Programming Concepts, Algorithms, SWE1, SWE2, DB2
◼ Artificial Intelligence, Neural Network, NLP, Genetic
Algorithms
◼ Internet Technology/Applications, Multimedia, Graphics
◼ OS1, OS2, Parallel Processing
◼ Compilers, Computer Architecture
CS Department = Low/High levels
Hardware (Architecture)

Operating System

Internet

Software
o Users
p hot DB
ad
uplo
s (C++) Programming (Algorithms)
a ce
d F
c t e
te
De Assembly Code

Machine Code
CS: Machine Learning Career

◼ Machine Learning = Learn from Data

◼ Given images and faces => Learn detecting faces
◼ Given emails (spam or not spam) => Learn Spam Detector
◼ Practical part
◼ Generally, still accuracies is not enough for market users
◼ Deep learning since 2012 (much data/deep models =>
Reasonable performance in some problems)
◼ Future
◼ Most SWE needs to do some ML. Link1/Link2.
◼ Point of view: In 5 years, hype around ML goes down
◼ Study roadmap / Companies in Egypt
IT Department

◼ Eng Mohamed Sami notes

◼ Network courses
◼ Mobile / Communication / Internet
◼ Security (Useful readings: Link1, Link2, Link3, Link4,
Link5, Link6, Link7, Link8)
◼ Application areas (but low market opportunities)
◼ Vision, Virtual Reality
◼ Pattern Recognition, Neural Network
◼ Multimeda / Graphics
Other Departments

◼ IS Department
◼ Databases / Information Systems
◼ Decision Support
◼ Private-Paid-1st year
◼ SWE Depart @ Helwan / FCICU?
◼ See notes here
◼ Bioinformatics Department @ Ain Shams
◼ Others
◼ Scientific Computing Department @ Ain Shams
◼ Geographic Information Systems
Goals for the 3rd year

◼ CS/IT: Select a new (market) language to

learn
◼ E.g. Java or C# in Egypt (what else in market?)
◼ Go deeper, read a book A-Z, practice, do projects
◼ Projects: Be professional, comments, good variable
names, design => Upload project on github
◼ Explore market needs (Ask TAs)
◼ E.g. For SWE: Front end(Web, Mobile) or ML
◼ Focus on low level not high level (e.g. Servlets not JSF)
◼ Focus on direction and basic knowledge of others
◼ Prepare for 3rd year internship
Internships

◼ Internship
◼ ‫ﺗﺪرﯾﺐ ﺻﯿﻔﻰ‬
◼ A job training for professional careers
◼ Companies plays a role in connecting you to the market
◼ It is for students (undergraduate locally, master or phd)
◼ Faculty gives you starting points
◼ You need to go further in the direction you like
◼ You need to see what else to study/do by your own
◼ Build connections with Drs/TAs, can they help?
◼ Linked in profile / Projects on github / 1-2 page CV
◼ Use connections/linked-in to find opportinitines
Local internships

◼ Maybe paid (but very low salary)

◼ Prepare toward your target career
◼ E.g. Software Engineering
◼ Be good in coding, algorithms, DS, OOP
◼ Learn Databases and play with queries
◼ Learn front end basics (e.g. For web: HTML/CSS)
◼ Do projects from A-Z
◼ Some machine learning opportunities (e.g. Microsoft)
◼ Microsoft/Valeo interviews = problem-solving
◼ Readings: Nature, Utilizing it
International Internships

◼ Some companies sponsor visas

◼ Big ones: Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, ….
◼ 2 phone interviews about problem-solving
◼ Preparation
◼ ‫ﻛﯿﻒ ﺗﻠﺘﺤﻖ ﺑﺎﻟﺸﺮﻛﺎت اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﯿﺔ ﻓﻲ ﻣﺠﺎل اﻟﺒﺮﻣﺠﺔ‬
◼ My Cracking Algorithmic Interviews
◼ Graduate?
◼ Apply in local university for MSc and apply for internship
◼ End of internship: Convert to Full time
◼ Savings
◼ In a USA internship, can save up to 20K
Goals for the 3rd year vacation

◼ 1-3 months internship

◼ If you felt you don’t learn, stop after 1 month
◼ Do Your projects or Google summer of code
◼ Training in competitive programming = great
◼ Prepare for the graduation project
Graduation Project

◼ Importance
◼ Your interface after graduation
◼ All interviews ask about it
◼ Start early, please: don’t delay learning, meeting, coding
◼ Consider your fresh job nature
◼ Orient the GP toward such nature to be more read
◼ Decide (as a team) Graduation project targets
◼ Dev vs Research
◼ E.g. Skilled in SWE technologies
◼ E.g. Research in vision + paper [next session on research]
◼ E.g. Machine Learning Project (3+ care)
Graduation Project: Team

◼ Members
◼ Having the right team is important
◼ Commitment on working hard, appropriate technical skills
and communication skills.
◼ Don't let friendship be a barrier for that
◼ Team leader responsibility is critical to get things done
◼ Success is responsibility of ALL
◼ Making (major/minor) decisions
◼ Let team size be odd number to facilitate voting
◼ Everyone do his own search and make a personal opinion
◼ As a team: 15-minute discussion, then VOTING
◼ Otherwise, you will do so many meetings => little outputs
Graduation Project: Ideas

◼ It is your team responsibility

◼ Thoughts
◼ Visit the library and see last years ideas.
◼ Visit professors and ask if they have some initial thoughts
◼ Google for ideas - Google for latest 100 startup: Link
◼ Idea needs to fit in the team size and available duration.
◼ Your idea may be an existing one, but you want to do it in
a better way. Facebook was not a unique and new idea.
◼ For Machine learning projects 3+ members at
least put hands on ML
◼ It is fun, but risky and hard. Learn early. ideas
Graduation Project: Supervisor

◼ Through your career, your supervisor

◼ e.g. tech lead / manager / Doctor
◼ S/he will be a critical factor for your success
◼ Use to ask about your supervisor. E.g. Try to find GP
teams from last years and ask about the professors.
◼ E.g. a good professor with very low availability = (very)
useless person
Graduation Project: Managing

◼ Thoughts
◼ Work Early....Work Hard....Don't wait for last moments
◼ Decide all things that you need to learn (e.g. ML, Web
Framework, tools, ...etc). Learn EARLY
◼ Divide project to milestones
◼ Reviews/Feedback from Dr/TA
◼ Team regular meetings...action items
◼ Read about Agile Development Style (SWE discipline)
◼ Team role is critical
◼ Follow up with action items. Should we cancel a member?
◼ ALL: Be flexible...learn from mistakes...listen to others
Graduation Project: Tools

◼ Management tool
◼ I love trello.
◼ You create boards, comments, deadlines, attachments
◼ Code on Version control system
◼ Team upload codes and files to an online system
◼ Learn git and use github (public) or bitbucket (private)
Goals for the 4th year

◼ Keep going in problem solving (preferred)

◼ Focus on your progress in the graduation
project
◼ Explore other programming languages
◼ E.g. Python or Javascript
◼ Sharpen more skills toward your career
◼ E.g. For SWE, enhance your design skills, Database
understanding, ...
Graduating

◼ Interview tips: Link1, Link2, Negotiate salary

◼ Working abroad
◼ Arabian Countries: Seems little to learn
◼ Google-like companies: See internships notes and Google
for people experience (Fayez Amazon)
◼ Small vs Big companies
◼ Freelancing: Link1, Link2, Link3, Link4, Link5
◼ Career paths for a developer
◼ Army Link1, Link2, Link3
◼ Career Switch
Programming languages 5 columns

Python

best language? book?

Php is good?

Src: Eng Mohamed Fouad (not sure his source)

Anticipating the future

◼ One property in this field is its dynamicity

◼ Today languages/technologies will die at some time
◼ Search about Javascript/Machine Learning in market size
◼ Few things to do
◼ Keep your eyes on the new things - try them out
◼ Try to understand the trends. Don’t wait till something be
so clear as part of the next 5 years.
◼ More importantly, be a graduate with strong basics
◼ Being strong in basics = Fast learner = More confidence
◼ Don’t fully depends on what faculty gives. Do your
homework. Go beyond that.
People and Communities

◼ Ask.fm
◼ Software Engineering: Mohamed Elsherif, Usama Fayez,
Mohamed Moshrif, Abdelrahman Elogeel, Emad Elsaid,
Shreef,
◼ Security: Mohamed A. Baset
◼ Embedded: Ahmed Saleh / Operating System: Karim
◼ Competitions, Computer vision, Research: Me
◼ Information System: Mohamed Mahmoud Hafez
◼ Links
◼ Sites for tech news
◼ EgyptianGeeks, Jobs, BigData, ML, ML, Vision
Useful Links: Front-End

◼ Links
◼ Web History by Ahmad Alfy
◼ Roadmap (Eng Mohamed Sherif link)
◼ Web design vs development
◼ Web or mobile (Android / IOS) ? All are ok (so far)
◼ Application complexity
◼ Is desktop software dead? Link1, Link2
◼ Android: Android1, Android2
Useful Links

◼ Improving Software Design Skills

◼ Topcoder Software: Docs, Design and Code for Java/C#
◼ Design pattern issue
◼ Java Projects (did not investigate before)
◼ SWE career needs, Good SWE
◼ Graduating but so weak => ITI (Link1, Link2)
◼ Click on EVERY link in this slides
◼ My experience more is CS things
◼ Other departments, ask your TAs about the market
◼ Embeded / Games / Networking
 ‫اﻧﺘﻈﺮوﻧﺎاا‬

‫◼ اﻟﻰ طﻼﺑﻨﺎ ﻓﻰ ﺣﺎﺳﺒﺎت و ﻣﻌﻠﻮﻣﺎت ‪ -‬اﻟﺪراﺳﺎت اﻟﻌﻠﯿﺎ‬

‫◼ اﻟﻰ طﻼﺑﻨﺎ ﻓﻰ ﺣﺎﺳﺒﺎت و ﻣﻌﻠﻮﻣﺎت ‪ -‬ﻣﻦ أﺟﻞ ﻣﺴﺘﻘﺒﻞ أﻓﻀﻞ‬
‫◼ اﻟﻰ طﻼﺑﻨﺎ ﻓﻰ ﺣﺎﺳﺒﺎت و ﻣﻌﻠﻮﻣﺎت ‪ -‬ﻧﺼﺎﺋﺢ أخ‬
 ‫ﺗﻢ ﺑﺤﻤﺪ ﷲ‬

‫ﻋﻠﻤﻜﻢ ﷲ ﻣﺎ ﯾﻨﻔﻌﻜﻢ‬

‫وﻧﻔﻌﻜﻢ ﺑﻤﺎ ﺗﻌﻠﻤﺘﻢ‬

‫وزادﻛﻢ ﻋﻠﻤﺎ ً‬