CSC290 Communication Skills for Computer Scientists

Introduce yourself to readers. What is something interesting and unique about you? What are your interests? What are your goals? How can other people help you, and what kind of help can you offer to other people? You should discuss one goal you have related to CSC290.

You should be careful about revealing personal information publicly on the internet, and can opt to write about yourself anonymously. However, having an online presence can help you "be known" both amongst other students and the community. Being "known" can be immensely helpful for your career!

For this week only, the deadline is Sept 23rd (not Sept 16th) to accomodate students who may be entering the course late.

Since week 1 blog post is due Sept 23rd, this is a blog post that does not need to be submitted. However, it is good to get into the habit of writing weekly!

Find an article or blog post on the internet that you disagree with. What does the article claim? Why do you disagree? Is the article using data or visualizations in a misleading way? You should not assume that your reader has read your article.

Here are some articles that you might disagree with. You do not have to restrict yourself to this list.

• I work, I swear
• Everyone should learn how to code
• Why study calculus

Describe your best project, the project you are most proud of. You can write about this project in one of two ways:

Using business analysis and project management terminologies: Describe the scope of the project. Were there any stakeholders? Were they satisfied? Describe the timeline of the project, including any milestones and deliverables. What was challenging about the project? What about the project makes you proud?

Using plain English: Describe your project. What did you do? Who did you work with? What was challenging? What made the project worthwhile? What impact did it have on other people? What did you learn? Why are you proud of the project?

The first strategy will give you more practice using business terminology. The second strategy will still give you practice explaining your project in a clear and concise manner.

You don't have to answer all prompt questions. An in-depth answer of a few questions makes a better blog post than enumerating answers.

A theme in this course is to strive to "be someone that other people want to work with". What does this mean to you? How would you describe the way you work with others? Are you easy to work with? Why or why not? How will you make sure that other people find it easy to work with you in the future?

You don't have to answer all prompt questions. An in-depth answer of a few questions makes a better blog post than enumerating answers.

Who is your favourite public speaker? What is your favourite talk by that speaker? What do you like about their presentations? What about their presentation structure, delivery, or style that you enjoy? The speaker does not have to be a computer scientist.

Avoid answering the prompt questions one by one. Instead, think about the message of your blog post and structure your blog post depending on what you want to get across.

This week's blog post will be a technical blog post. There are a few topics that you can choose from:

• Describe one of the design patterns that you are learning in CSC207
• Describe how to resolve merge conflicts in git
• Describe what recursion is and how to write recursive functions

Use a monospace font for code samples and function names, to differentiate them from English words. Remember to keep the audience in mind. In this case, your readers are computer science students and enthusiasts. Also, don't forget the other technical writing guidelines that we discussed in lecture. Here are some example technical blog posts:

• Avoiding git disasters gory story
• Tie Breaking Rounding
• A successful git branching model This is a longer blog post than required, but this blog post was very influential. Many companies use similar git branching models.

This week's "blog post" isn't a blog post at all. Instead, you will put what we learned about emails to good use, and write an email to a potential mentor. You should not publish this email on your blog.

First, think about how someone with more experience could help you right now. Is there a company you are looking to join? Are you looking for a summer internship? Identify ways that other people can help you.

Next, look on the internet (for example on LinkedIn) for someone who could help you achieve what you are looking for. This could be someone who currently works at a company, a startup founder that might give you an internship, or a graduate student working with a professor whom you would like to do research with.

Finally, write an email to this person. You could ask them for advice over coffee, for possible job openings, or anything else appropriate for your current situation.

You are not required to actually send this email, however you would be doing the hard work of drafting it.

For this week only, submit a PDF file on MarkUs containing (1) information about the recipient of your email and why you chose him or her, (2) the email subject and body.

Grading will be out of 4. With:

• 1 point for completion.
• 1 point for structure and grammar.
• 2 point for content, including following the guidelines we described in class.