Benjamin Fallon ’16: Building Apps By The Sea

By Evie Lawson on February 15, 2016

The following post is by Benjamin Fallon ’16, a Computer Science major. Fallon used his AMS grant to take an intensive class on building apps for iOS in Pacific Grove, California.

At the end of January, I took off to Pacific Grove, California to take a week-long intensive course called “Beginning iOS with Swift,” or put colloquially, “Class for people who want to build iPhone apps.” The course was taught by industry-respected company Big Nerd Ranch, who offers a buffet of courses on the most in-demand technologies; writes award-winning books in Android and iOS development; and teaches engineers from places like Facebook, Spotify, and Airbnb. As their name suggests, Big Nerd Ranch offers their courses in naturally beautiful places where you can “get away from it all” and focus entirely on your learning.

Throughout my time at Colgate, I had been considering a lot of very different ideas about how to use my AMS grant. And while I’m sure I would have had a positive experience regardless of what I decided to do, I couldn’t have asked for a better, more valuable experience. As a Senior who will be graduating this May, I’m currently in the thick of job searching. So when I was deciding on my project during the Fall semester, I knew that I wanted to do something that would have long-term value and help me out professionally after graduation. About a year and a half ago, I started dabbling with Android development in my free-time, reading all of the free tutorials online and watching a bunch of Youtube videos, trying to learn just enough to get a functioning, even-if-totally useless app on my phone. Though this self-teaching was a tedious, challenging, and often frustrating experience, it was also fun, rewarding, and pretty darn cool. I was fascinated by the idea of being able to build some idea that your mind only recently constructed. I was fascinated how smartphones — and an entirely new industry — seemed to suddenly appear out of nowhere and became virtually ubiquitous in many places throughout the world; I remember when I was growing up and the Motorola RAZR came out for the first time…it was hot stuff at the time. But most of all, I was fascinated by the challenge and the puzzle-like nature of it all. After dabbling for about a year, I realized this could be a real career option. I started exploring more…following more blogs, watching more Youtube videos, trying to hack together some simple apps. After doing hours of web research on different ideas for my project, I stumbled upon the Beginning iOS with Swift class and I realized this is what I wanted to do. I had already dabbled in Android, and if I could get introduced to iOS I would have some solid experience under my belt as I entered the job market. I submitted my proposal, got approved for funding, and when the time came, I flew out to California.

The class was made up of about 20 students, ranging from young professionals to industry veterans. Many were sent by their companies, some looking to switch careers, but all were excited to learn what all the iOS development stuff was all about. In 2014, Apple released a new programming language called Swift that was meant to further simplify the process of writing software for iOS, OS X (and now watchOS and tvOS). Since its release, Apple has been encouraging developers to switch from Objective-C to Swift as they write their apps. Many developers who have used Objective-C extensively in the past were reluctant to make the switch, but momentum for the language has picked up, and all signs show that Swift is here to stay. For people like me who do not have prior experience with Objective-C, Swift is the clear choice for writing apps. I still need to be familiar with Objective-C since most of the existing codebase is written in it, but Swift is the future of making apps for Apple products.

Accordingly, the first two days of the class were all about the Swift language — how it works, what makes it unique, what programming constructs are available. After these two days of being thrown off the deep-end, it was time to see how Swift is used to actually make real iOS apps. The class was set up so we would go over a new topic and then take some time to complete exercises where we put it into practice building example apps. In other words, it was a series of lecture and lab sessions. Starting in the morning and with lab hours often extending well into the night, it was tiring; however, we made sure to take plenty of breaks to rejuvenate ourselves by taking walks along an absolutely stunning coastline. Throughout the week, we got to know everyone in the group better, as we ate our meals together and often got together to socialize after class was done for the day. We often talked about technology, sharing our knowledge, experiences, and viewpoints. Our instructor told us many stories from his long career in the tech industry. Being around people interested in the same industry was exciting and invaluable. It got me excited to graduate and start my career, working alongside people who also are excited about building things with code. It reminded me that what makes life fun and enjoyable is surrounding yourself with the right people. And perhaps most importantly of all, it motivated me to take what I learned from the week and run with it.

Apps coming soon to an app store near you.

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Student Profile: Mac Baler ’15

By Jessica Li on March 30, 2015

Name: Mac Baler
Class Year: 2015
Major: Computer Science and Japanese
Campus Activities: Senior Admissions Fellow, President of Masque & Triangle, Astronomy Teaching Assistant

Mac Baler is a senior Alumni Memorial Scholar and used his AMS scholars grant for a project that is both an intellectual interest and a personal passion, fostered throughout his four years at Colgate University. Mac has a love for Japan and the Japanese language, and he used his AMS grant and capstone project as an opportunity to delve more deeply into this passion.

Mac’s first time in Japan was during the fall of his Junior year on a program at a school called Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan. Although he started studying Japanese during his sophomore year, he hadn’t had any prior language experience. Mac fell in love with Japanese, which was the impetus for his decision to study abroad in Japan.

His semester abroad “was the most unbelievable experience, really.” Mac did a home-stay with a family for four months, explored various parts of the country, and was immersed in Japanese. Mac said that he believed his experience was so wonderful because “Between that family and the students and people that I met, it was so unreal how welcoming they were, not only my host family but also the students that I met, I felt like I belonged.”

Once he returned to Colgate, Mac knew that he needed to return to Japan. After a summer of brainstorming with advisors and professors in the Japanese department, he realized that his passion for the Japanese language could be the foundation for an interesting project. “I think that this is something that I realized while I was in Japan, it was fascinating to me because I had friends learning English while I was learning Japanese.”

In tandem with his professors, Mac decided to do a linguistics research project, which would be focused on youth language, or slang, in Japan. Japan has a unique culture of slang, which is highly geographically specific. “When people ask me about it I explain, in the US if you live in Boston, you say ‘wicked,’ and if you go to California people will still know what you mean. But in Japan that’s not true. So, with such massive dialectical differences the youth language is really interesting.”

Mac’s travel and research in Japan, which he conducted during winter break of 2015, was funded by his AMS grant, and afford him the opportunity to investigate the current state of youth language in Japan. Ultimately, Mac hopes to help other students interested in learning Japanese on their language journey. “I think that as someone who is learning Japanese as a foreign language, and as someone who was really excited to go to Japan, and didn’t have any language prep, there was no way that I would be prepared for youth slang or dialect and how that would change. I thought if I could provide a guide for students interested in learning Japanese that would be a valuable resource. I think it is vital to be able to speak with youth, especially if you’re going to be going to a school there.”

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Student Profile: Elyse Cainfarano ‘15

By Jessica Li on November 10, 2014

Name: Elyse Cianfarano
Class year: 2015
Hometown: Fulton, NY
Major: Sociology
Minor: Creative Writing
Campus Activities: Leader of the Disaster Response Team, Writer for the Maroon News, Gamma Phi Beta

As a senior AMS Scholar, Elyse Cainfarano ’15 has established herself on campus as an active and socially-conscious member of the Colgate Community. Her AMS research topic, inspired by her interest in documentary filmmaking, focused initially on postindustrial cities and postindustrial value systems. However, over the course of her process of interviewing, her inquiries transitioned into an exploration of “how people in our age bracket decide what’s important to them,” as well as “how people like you and I balance caring about the bigger picture, and also caring about making our own paths.”

In search of answers to these questions, Elyse traveled to Missouri, Illinois, Ohio, interviewing people and filming those interviews, asking questions about the background of the people she met. She focused on uncovering what matters most to the young people she encountered, and often befriended. “Think globally, act locally came up a lot,” Elyse observed. “I think that a lot of times the bigger issues that we are all dealing with can really bog a person down. But many of the people I spoke with also touched upon the concept of taking action within your means as a valid way of dealing with those bigger issues.”

Elyse is now writing a senior thesis in sociology, which has stemmed in part from her AMS project. She is concerned with “the relationship between individual values, and the impressions of individuals.” Elyse described her thesis as an opportunity to contribute in some way to the Colgate community. Therefore, she targeted her research on the idea of a typical Colgate student.

This focus stems in part from her personal experiences on campus, observing whether or not individual people perceive their own identities as a part of the larger Colgate identity, and the reasons behind those perceptions. Elyse has a theory, that Colgate students may have an idea of the typical Colgate student, “when in reality there is a lot more variety than we all believe.”

Elyse described how her experiences on campus have informed her perspective on all that Colgate has to offer. She spoke about how, as a senior, she has become “more confident in things that mattered” to her, and was able to find people who shared the values she found important. “I think that there are a lot of people who don’t know initially how to navigate Colgate, and through my own experiences I have seen that the Colgate community has so much potential. Colgate has given me a great college experience, and I want to help other people have the same great experience that I have.”

By Jessica Spero Li ‘15

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