Intern Review

Previous to my internship, I had done very little coding, which made me rather apprehensive about doing a three-month internship writing software. However, these fears were entirely unfounded; SoftWire eased me in to work and by the end of it I felt much, much more confident than I had going in. The work was fun, constructive and challenging, and the working environment was incredibly positive.

I generally felt welcomed by my colleagues, not just with my fellow interns and those whose job it was to look after us, but also with other members of the company I did not have work-related contact with. It always felt like we were all one big team and all important parts of that; I never felt undervalued or superfluous.

I was given a lot of support by my supervisors, who were almost always on hand to advise and help out, and who did so with a great deal of skill and expertise.

I felt that the workload I was given was a good amount. Occasionally, I would finish a piece of work and feel at a loose end for a little while, but generally I would quickly able to grab a supervisor and be issued another ticket without much delay, which was good.

I had a fair amount of responsibility; though project structure and assignment of what parts were needed was up to my supervisors, I had a fair amount of freedom over what I picked up to work on next, and was often included in conversations about design decisions and possible directions in which we could take the project.

I now have a decent working knowledge of programming in C# and Javascript, and an understanding of project workflow, but more important is the more general knowledge, of how projects are designed and built, why particular design patterns are used, how various pieces of software fit together and how to proactively solve software errors.