My experience thus far on the Developer Factory program:

2012-11-05

Windows 8 With Windows 8 being released last week, a lot of people are upset and even angry at the changes Windows has made. A lot of people are complaining because it’s so different. There is no start button, it’s too confusing, and everything is new. But who says that’s a bad thing? Technology is constantly changing and if you don’t keep up you’re going to be left behind. In my opinion I really like it, it’s different but that’s how everything in life is. I’ve been using the release preview for a few months now and I had no problems with it, few new shortcuts to learn but everything ran perfectly. It also looks much better, not close to Apple’s style but it’s nice to know that Microsoft is starting to take things like this in account. One thing I found really cool was when I created and logged in with my online Microsoft account, and formatted my pc later. I installed Windows 8 again and logged in with the same Microsoft account and it automatically set my newly formatted pc to my old background. Small things like that impressed me. Windows 8 has a whole new interface the Modern UI. This is a very radical change and it might seem fit more for phones and tablets but they work perfectly on a normal PC. It feels like Windows 8 is separated by the new Modern UI apps and the normal Windows environment that most people are used to, kind of like a best of both worlds. The Windows app store just feels really empty at this point but it’ll hopefully improve once Windows 8 starts to settle in. Microsoft has always led the PC world with its operating systems. In the past few years Apple, Linux and Google has taken a lot of new consumers. Apple is now the leading with the laptop market in the US and Google is leading with 75% of the global market share (Q3 2012) smartphones running its OS, Android. It’s time for Microsoft to make its comeback with of all its new Microsoft products such as the new Windows phone, the new surface tablet and even the new Xbox 720. All of these would be linked together with a single account. Microsoft has the resources to get back on top but we’ll just have to wait and see.

2012-10-02

In today's world the one thing lacking that cannot be provided by universities/colleges is working experience. It’s the most crucial part for any young person to get into the working world. This is where the Developer Factory comes into play, providing that missing piece that almost every company wants - working experience. If you have working experience, you are already ahead in your career. The Developer Factory has so far been very exciting. It went from only me working on a project at a time to a group of people working on the same project at the same time. It was all new to me. The programming language we use isn’t very well known so there’s almost no help online, you got to figure everything out yourself. It’s a new challenge but it’s quite nice once you get used to it. I’ve been at the Developer Factory for two months and only now I can see how everything works, especially how to put a project together. It’s very different from doing coding projects for college. It’s a very pleasant environment to work in and the people are great. This developer factory is a brilliant system that gives you a chance to prove yourself and get real working experience.