What makes a good portfolio?
June 4, 2008
A few tips to build a good portfolio,
1. Tailor your portfolio contents to the type of job/client you are meeting with.
2. Yet still show some variety.
3. You don’t need a huge portfolio, a small one containing print outs of your work is just as good or better than a large portfolio carrying your originals. It will also be lighter for chugging around for a whole day (if that happens to be your case).
4. Make sure you can explain everything in your portfolio, the original plan, challenges you faced, the final outcome.
And finally your portfolio needs to be:~
It provides a record of things that you have learned and done that you can use, in the future, when you need to remember it. It guides you to examples of things that work and things that are bad, and things that are interesting.
You should have links to very simple examples of code that demonstrate the rules you want to remember. It should say what the rules are and point to the examples of the rule:
“In LISP it is simple to simulate records by defining function to construct them and functions to extract components from them.”
“In Prolog you don’t have any functions so you simulate y=square(x) by square(y,x)”.
“In Java there is no main program, but a class of objects can have a method that works like a C/C++ main program”
It should be about you. It should point to code that interested you, even if you found it somewhere else. Your comments should be your own even if the code is somebody else’s.
If you didn’t write it, then you must say where it came from.
It should be something that you can have some pride in.
It should have some kind of structure, perhaps have a few small decorations, and must be easy to read. It should be written and designed so that you won’t feel ashamed of it later because of spelling mistakes, bad grammar, or something silly.
You might want to have some pointers to something complicated you have done as well as several simple examples, just to show what you are capable of.
Here’s a website.. it is from one of ma favourite magazine called ‘Computerarts’ but it’s expensive in Malaysia.. @_@
they ar telling more tips on buildin up a good portfolio…
http://www.computerarts.co.uk/in_depth/features/what_makes_the_perfect_portfolio
