Software engineering may seem like an unintelligible, mysterious realm to some, but to CSUEB alumnus Venkata Vemuri, it’s like a second language. Vemuri’s software engineering expertise has led him to a highly successful career, working for some of the largest tech companies in the Bay Area and now, penning his first book.
Vemuri, originally from India, stated that his love for computer science began in high school, when he and a group of classmates built a cricket news website from scratch.
After a user requested that the website be modified to accommodate for their vision impairment, Vemuri became particularly interested in front-end engineering: software engineering focused on designing user interfaces on websites, or mobile applications, to best cater to the user’s experience.
“That was the pivotal point where I really wanted to move to America and work on this cutting edge technology and build more web applications,” Vemuri said.
In 2005, Vemuri attended Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in India, where he received a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Vemuri then moved to America to pursue a master’s degree at Cal State East Bay, graduating in 2012.
Over the past 13 years, Vemuri worked as a software and front-end engineer across various tech companies such as Cisco, Intertrust, and Amazon Web Services. He currently works as a senior principal software engineer at Oracle.
After two decades of shaping his computer science knowledge and expertise, Vemuri wants to pass down what he has learned to the next generation of aspiring computer engineers in the form of his first book, Principles and Practices of Front-End Engineering.
Vemuri felt inspired to write the book based on challenges he encountered in his own experience.
“One of the challenges I faced in my career is that you don’t understand all the pieces of the puzzle. You don’t know what to ask for,” Vemuri said, “There’s not a lot of mentorship in terms of front-end engineering.”
The book primarily caters to early-career front-end engineers, but Vemuri also recommends that back-end engineers read the book as well, to understand the complete inner workings of a website. The book is written in a concise and conversational tone, delivering detailed information to readers in less than 90 pages.
“In this book I listed out all the things you need to know. It’ll teach you all the tools that we use and why we use it, and how we use it. What I learned in the first two, three years of my career, you would probably learn in a two, three-day period,” Vemuri added.=
Vemuri is currently planning to write a second book focused on system design.
Along with the tips and information in his book, Vemuri also advises computer science students and aspiring engineers to not overthink everything. In Vemuri’s eyes, the best way to develop coding skills is to simply do the work and trust the process.
“The fundamental truth I learned over time is that nobody has all the answers. So if you think you only know 2% of it, that’s good enough. [When] you start building, you start learning,” Vemuri said.
For one week only, Vemuri’s book is available for free digital download on Amazon. Click here to get a free e-book; the offer lasts until Oct. 31. There is also a paperback version available on Amazon for $5.
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
