Interview at 11 AM today. A bit (unreasonably) nervous about this one as it is cloud/java based and will include a coding exercise. It has been almost five years (longer than I remembered but…) since I wrote any Java code so I don’t expect that part to go all that smoothly. I’ve done a bit of review over the weekend but I’ve also had other things to attend to so there’s only so much a few hours can do.

Realistically if they’re really just looking for someone with smokin’ java skills and aren’t interested in the rest of my background I’m probably not the right candidate for them but I still tend to stress about these sorts of things. I ramp fast (witness my time with Amazon Robotics) but that doesn’t make struggling with the simple stuff in an interview any more pleasant.

The range of potential opportunities makes refreshers much harder. I’ve seen C++. C# and Java based opportunities (and some crossing those lines) along with RTOS, Windows and Linux targets. Add in a bigger mix of places where significant GUI work is involved and I’m dancing all over the place in my reading and bits of sample code.

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Over the weekend was doing some OpenCL reading and looking at CUDA a bit. Both interesting technologies but I think I’m going to back-burner then to more OpenGL and C++/C# stuff.

Given the Tuesday java/cloud interview I bought the latest Core Java set. Less has changed in the five or so years since I did serious java coding than I expected. I’m still in need of serious refresher on the java front but since the split is 90% other and 10% java and my broader skills in software architecture and design should be front and center for the sort of positions that would be a good match I’m not overly concerned.

I am thinking about looking at OpenGL from Java a little along the way as I have a copy of ”Pro Java 9 Games Development’ sitting around that uses JavaFX and 3D APIs. Would be good to do a little coding in IntelliJ IDEA again and use some JavaFX code to have another angle on the 3D render stuff…

Starting a new week and still spread out on tech topics to visit but a little more focused after the weekend.

Looking at a week of OpenGL, OpenCL, WPF, WinForms, C# and Java as I keep at my tech refresher work on things I haven’t touched recently.

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I keep running into opportunities where embedded and UI are both relevant. Some also add in 3D rendering. I have done a modest amount of work in both, but generally as a prototyping/tooling/home project thing and it has been a while since I dipped my toes in there (the crypto work at Draeger was pretty intense). The most recent home project work has involved VR and Unity rather than the lower level APIs so that doesn’t necessarily translate directly.

I ramp fast so part of this is refresher and part of this is a demonstration (if all goes well). This will still be a bit spread out as there have been quite a few areas that job descriptions have pointed to.

At this point I’m planning to spend most of my 3D-ish time in OpenGL and OpenCL as Vulkan and Direct3D 12 seem to be more appropriate to high performance video games and I’ve done some work in the past using OpenGL and done substantial reading on OpenCL.

On the UI front I may very well do a little MFC work to support the OpenGL coding as the sample frameworks in C++ that are provided by the books I have (‘OpenGL Superbible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference 7th Edition’ and ‘OpenCL Programming Guide (OpenGL) 1st Edition’) are pretty rudimentary. Once I have C++ based code running I’ll probably step over to trying some things in WinForms (on place seems to really want WinForms and 3D) and WPF using PInvoke or helper DLLs in C++.

I’m also going to look at back-filling some areas of C# where I’m weak…particularly LINQ and the async/await patterns.

Java has come up on the cloud side lately as well. Since it has been a few years since I wrote any Java I picked up the latest ‘Core Java, Volume I: Fundamentals, 12th edition’ and ‘Core Java: Advanced Features, Volume 2, 12th Edition’. Looks from a quick scan as if Java has changed less in recent years than C++ or C# so some refresher exercises and reading seems like it should do. I haven’t really used my IntelliJ IDEA license in some time (other parts of the JetBrains Toolkit have been of great value) so this will be a welcome chance to get that up and in service as well.