Hi, I’m Hassan and I have just completed a work experience placement for a period of one week. Throughout this time, I gained valuable knowledge and experience of what it would be like to work as a software engineer. It’s unfortunate that the whole week went in a flash because I enjoyed every single moment. It has only confirmed that software engineering is the career path I want to pursue, and I will definitely consider working at borwell in the future!
I was able to get my placement by applying through my college and completing the software challenge in order to submit and validate my application. On the first day, I was first introduced to the super friendly borwell team. They really did make me feel welcomed and looked after me so well during my time here. I was then given a tour around the site, which enabled me to know my way around MHSP. I was then assigned onto the Java team and was shown programs that they have produced and ones that they were currently working on. I was then assigned onto a very big project which was currently in progress. Although I have experience in Android Java, it was not enough for me to understand pure Java, so I was given online resources by my leader and I spent the first day learning Java.
The next day I was told that I was ready to begin working on the project. I was introduced to the Luciad API which was used in the project and the IntelliJ IDEA IDE, and was then assigned tasks. The tasks appeared harder as first thought due to a large amount of code in the project; so many methods and classes! Nevertheless, I was continually supported by my surrounding team. I was also introduced to source control and was shown how it is used to keep versions of code including key features like branches, commits and pull requests. I was also shown debugging tricks and ways to optimise and reduce my code.
At lunch time I was always invited to join the team for lunch. We always took a 5-10 minute walk to Barnard’s Green to get food and then back. It really is a great way to refresh yourself after programming for a couple of hours.
Near the end of day four, I was finished with my tasks, so I paired up with my leader and we worked together on a program that my leader was currently working on. We worked on improving the UI such as adding progress bars, whilst I was being explained what the code did, expanding my knowledge of Java.
In conclusion it has been one of the best experiences that I have ever had and I strongly recommend anyone looking to do software engineering to get a work experience placement at borwell. There is no better place than borwell to get the feel and experience of software engineering.