Comp. Sci. Alumni Feedback

Oct 17, 2022

Video

Written

Jonjon graduated 2017

Ms. Ali's Computer Science classes was always an enjoyable experience, it helped me get started in a field where you could easily get lost. I learned enough to go 100% but was always inspired to go beyond. Whenever I am programming nowadays, I'm always thinking back about the fundamentals I learned back in these classes. It gave me a good base to grow from when I'm learning or even working on the subject again.

Courses took:

Programming
Networking
Hardware
Linux

Alumni graduated 2017

Alumni graduated 2017 - 1

Scott graduated 2019

Programming 11 and Programming 12 were one of the best classes I've taken during my time at Killarney. Not only did the course help me better prepare my skills at BCIT, but also Ms. Ali is a fantastic teacher! Those courses taught me important concepts and the fundamentals that I'm still applying in my career.

Liam graduated 2019

Ms. Ali made learning Computer Science incredibly fun and engaging. She was dedicated to making her courses comprehensive, making understanding concepts easy. This, coupled with the careful attention she would give you if you struggled, made me excited to show up to each class.

Alumni graduated 2014

Hello prospective students and parents of Killarney Secondary. I’m a Software Engineer at Facebook, based in the Seattle office. I graduated from the University of Waterloo’s Software Engineering program in 2019, and prior to that attended Killarney Secondary from 2009 to 2014. During my 5 years at Killarney, I was of a previous iteration of the Mini School program, where all students took English, Math, Science, and Socials together. I also took Programming 10, 11, and 12 courses.

Programming 10 launched my entire career path by teaching me programming fundamentals using a very practical and beginner-friendly language: Python. Programming 11 was a very comprehensive course on the building blocks of websites and databases. It provided me the skills needed to start my own personal projects, an essential addition to any software engineering resume before you have any work experience. Last but not least, Programming 12 taught C++ and Object Oriented Programming, a language and technique used widely in industry.

These courses have a very good mix of theory and practice. They gave me a head start on many of my first and second year university courses. I even use content from all three courses on a weekly if not daily basis at Facebook today. I would highly recommend them for any students considering going into Software Development.

Jacky graduated 2016

Hi my name is Jacky, I graduated from Killarney in 2016 and currently I am currently wrapping up my education at SFU with a major in computing science and a minor in mathematics. Prior to any classes with Ms.Ali I had no idea what I really wanted to do. At that time, (2013-14) I had minimal knowledge about computers and only saw one as a game console. In grade 10 I took computing hardware with Ms.Ali for the first time and I had a blast learning about hardware and how a computer works. From there I took more and more classes with Ms.Ali ranging from networking 11 and 12 as well as Programing 11,12, and 13. I'll be honest taking those classes with Ms.Ali made all my lower division computing classes at SFU a breeze. However, in my opinion programming is not the only thing Ms.Ali teaches well. Rather over the years I have taking classes with Ms.Ali I was able to develop a more analytical mind with regards to tackling a tough problem. While taking lower division classes where easy that is not to say the upper divisions were the same. I struggled a lot, and same with a lot of students at that time. However, I never gave up because over the years with Ms.Ali I learned that anything is possible as long as I change my way of thinking. There were many coding assignments assigned by Ms.Ali however, and I'll be honest back when I first started coding, I wanted to give up really easily. However, over time that there are multiple ways to attempt a problem and each time I solved an assignment I was super happy. (While I did stay after school one too many times. 😃) Nowadays, I if any of my professors assigned the same assignments that Ms.Ali gave I would finish them in 30 mins or less. You will likely struggle in her classes in the short term, in the long term there is a lot of benefits since there is a lot of benefits in knowing how to program.

Felix graduated 2015

My name is Felix Law and I graduated from Killarney in 2015 and I graduated from UBC with a Bachelor's degree in computer science in 2021. My interest in IT sparked in my Killarney years has led me on a journey that has not only led me to meet many friends and mentors, but also brought me many exciting experiences such as a research internship in Japan for about a year back in 2018. At the time of writing this, I am currently working for an identity management company that more than 60% of the Fortune 100 trust.

As a teenager, I was fascinated with technology. When I learned about Ms. Ali's IT courses back in Grade 8, I did not hesitate in signing up to learn more about my passion in the following year. The first IT course I took was Information Technology 10. In that course, I was introduced to a variety of different topics related to technology, including software programming, computer hardware and even computer graphics. From there, I went on to take Networking 11, Programming 11 and Programming 12 throughout my time at Killarney.

Apart from my innate attraction to technology, what made me continue to take Ms. Ali's IT courses were that we were always creating interesting things and that her courses were really challenging.

Just about every month or so, we would be creating something new in Ms. Ali's courses. Some projects that I made over the years ranged from coding our own local webpage to creating an animation video, all of which were made from scratch. It felt amazing to be able to apply what I had learned from Ms. Ali and create something cool that I could show to my friends and family.

One of the reasons why I was successful as an undergraduate at UBC was because of how challenging Ms. Ali's IT courses were. Ms. Ali's teaching methodology forces students to actively think of and try different approaches when faced with problems in her class. Even when the material is exceptionally challenging (which is not too uncommon), Ms. Ali will not spoon feed her students when they have not attempted to solve the problem(s) on their own or have not thought through the problem thoroughly enough. In my experience, this taught me to become more self-sufficient as I would always attempt to solve problems on my own first instead of being fully dependent on the people around me. Additionally, since Ms. Ali pushed us to think on our own first, I learned to think critically and understand what I was working with rather than just having a surface level knowledge of it. This proved extremely useful while I was at UBC as you need to be able to understand, connect and extrapolate concepts in order to do well in university.

Overall, Ms. Ali's IT courses cover a plethora of interesting topics and provide a lot of cool projects for her students to work on to apply their newly acquired knowledge. I can not stress enough about how impactful Ms. Ali's IT courses were to me and I hope that all of the current and future CS Mini school students will have an as amazing learning experience as I did when I was at Killarney :)

Michael